by Sha Huang
The Other Bank
Spring, again
and the fog is a heavy sheet
of somber, of summer
elsewhere.
Spring again, the flowers
just simmering along
bubbling into color
underfoot where the burrs grow
while rockets open buildings
like dissections.
Spring, again, opens, bursting, somewhere
and smoke and dust curl like vines
over upturned books and broken dishes
like how we evade one another’s questions—
each post an erasure of guilt
like crossing a stream and forgetting the other bank.
Sarah Trott is a teacher and writer living and working in the Bay Area. Sarah’s writing has been published, among other places, in Digital Paper, Shampoo Poetry, and Cricket Online Review. She has one full-length book of poetry, Planned (There Press, 2009).
Sha Huang grew up in China. Her poems appeared in many literary journals and anthologies in China, North America, and Europe, including Muddy Review Poetry Review, Ekaphrastic Review, The Wild Word, and Chinese and Western Poetry (中西诗歌). She was a nominee for Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net 2021. She has a bilingual poetry book October Fruit (十月之果) with the Milky Way Publishing (银河出版社) in Hong Kong and her poems were rewarded the outstanding translated poems in the third Flush Poetry Festival. In addition to writing poems, she also enjoys creating art. Her art works were published Ekaphrastic Review and exhibited in Suzhou, China, Asheville, North Carolina, and Acworth and Kennesaw, Georgia. She currently teaches Chinese and Asian cultures at Kennesaw State University.