Discussing Our Current Condition

Duo Yu
Translated from the Chinese by Fiona Sze-Lorrain

It’s like this: someone is left with his last breath, someone has lost his youth.Too many hows and whys, we often self-interrogate until speechless.Sacrifice a word to the ax, hammer it into rows of nails.Or let darkness breed in our pupils glittering with shame.Doomsday has no doomsday, there is no trial from the start.The world is a vector, time drives us to somewhere far.Freedom isn’t free, in thrill a rope looks for heads it can fastenone by one, the asphalt pavement rises like a beast’s shoulder.Love is just a random thought, like the shine of a sycophant’s front teeth.No more hometown to bury someone, how wonderful, we die in the air.

Feature Date

Series

Selected By

Share This Poem

Print This Poem

Duo Yu 朵渔 was born in Shandong Province and is one of the founding members of the Lower Body Movement, based in Beijing during the early 2000s. He received the 2007 Rougang Poetry Award and the 2010 Chinese Literature Media Award, and is the author of two collections of poetry, Chasing Butterflies (2009) and Writing Little Poems Causes Worries (2010). His several books of prose include Meanings Have Bored Us (2003) and Ten Faces (2009). He lives in Tianjin.

Fiona Sze-Lorrain’s latest collection is The Ruined Elegance, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry and one of Library Journal’s “Best Books 2015: Poetry.” She lives in Paris where she works as a zheng harpist and an editor.

The Literary Review

61.2

Madison, New Jersey

Fairleigh Dickinson University

Editor
Minna Zallman Proctor

Poetry Editors
Michael Morse
Craig Morgan Teicher

The Literary Review (TLR) publishes the best new fiction, poetry, and prose from a broad community of international writers and translators, both emerging and established, whose commonality is literary quality and urgency of voice and artistic conviction. It is this genuine community of readers, writers, and publishers that distinguishes us. Our editorial standard is to read with an open, discerning mind, and to publish carefully and vigorously. We connect our writers to readers.

Poetry Daily Depends on You

With your support, we make reading the best contemporary poetry a treasured daily experience. Consider a contribution today.