Handfuls

Hua Xi

I toss a handful into the air.
A handful of nonspecific stuff.
What is this that my hands are tossing?
I’m tossing handfuls of snow into the air.
Where am I getting all this snow on a summer’s day?
It must come from somewhere inside me.
I’m tossing handfuls of somewhere everywhere, all the way
up into the air, and it’s flitting down and amassing
atop the immaculate townships.
Tin roofs. Church steeples. Lines of parked cars.
Summer is a pure lone mountain.
Somehow, a winter flowers against an enormous blue loneliness
as a figure wilts far below and wonders,
How can snow fall without falling in love?
Wherever I go, my furthest thoughts are lightly billowing.
Whatever is buried within me, I keep
pulling out in tufts.
I hope that when I feel cold, you can feel what I feel
but without feeling any cold.
Because I have struggled to do so,
I choose to believe that
not all sadness comes from somewhere.
The sadness that comes from somewhere drifts down
and mixes with the sadness that isn’t from anywhere.
All of us are ordinary people. None of us
can escape the difficult nature
of being thrown away
by a warm afternoon in winter.

What Keeps Us

Poems to Read in Community

Inspired by C. D. Wright’s poem “What Keeps,” we offer Hua Xi’“Handfuls” as part of a twenty-poem selection from poems we’ve featured in 2024—poems, like bread, that one might pass across the table—to a loved one, or to oneself. 

Read editor Lloyd Wallace’s introduction to the collection and statements from our staff readers hereRead poems by selecting below.

What Keeps

Some nights We stay up
passing it back and
forth
between us
drinking deep

Read >

This Era

Forests and cities

along the way sleep like huge dark churches.

Read >

Talisman

each of us bearing the art
in a curve of wing, a small motif
of feather,

Read >

Rewind

Have you ever seen something that buzzes inside you?
I am watching two kids encounter each other

Read >

Rationale

Because she still won’t sleep alone, you sleep deeply
with her small warm body wrapped in your arms.

Read >

Pupusas

no, the pupusa is a portrait
            of this life, crusting & breaking
                        with every lick & tooth

Read >

Psalm III

in what language should I speak to you, sun
so you’ll rise tomorrow for my child, so you’ll
rise and stimulate the growth of our food,

Read >

Night Song

You’ll never know
what became of me
in the dark, how
my body opened,

Read >

Handfuls

Summer is a pure lone mountain.
Somehow, a winter flowers against an enormous blue loneliness

Read >

Eurydice

It snowed the day I died, a freak spring storm.
(It was in the papers.)

Read >

December

Instead of snow, a dark pouring rain
to dodge as passersby reject us.  No spruces, but sycamores with their white cankers.

Read >

Feature Date

Series

Selected By

Share This Poem

Print This Poem

Photo of Hua Xi

Hua Xi is a writer and artist.

Cover of Yale Review Summer 2024

Volume 112, No 2: Summer 2024

New Haven, Connecticut

Yale University

Editor
Meghan O'Rourke

Managing Editor
Will Frazier

Since 1911, The Yale Review has been publishing new works by the most distinguished contemporary writers—from Virginia Woolf to Vladimir Nabokov, from Robert Frost to Eudora Welty. The journal’s pages have, for almost a century, been filled with the most exhilarating and astute writing of our times. Under the editorship of Meghan O'Rourke, a best-selling poet and memoirist, The Yale Review presents up-and-coming writers, explores the broader movements in American thought, science, and culture, and reviews the best new books in a variety of fields.

“I look forward to The Yale Review because I know I will encounter historians and poets, essayists and reviewers, who will take me on the most intriguing excursions beyond the headlines.”
—Peter Jennings, Broadcast Journalist

“It’s good news that this noble, long-established periodical is back in circulation.”
—Iris Murdoch

The Yale Review, with its distinguished history, is one of the very finest of American literary journals. Its thoughtfully edited contents include both imaginative and critical writing of a very high—and entertaining—order.”
—Joyce Carol Oates

Poetry Daily Depends on You

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