Yuan Changming, nine-time Pushcart and two-time Best of the Net nominee, published monographs on translation before moving out of China. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan currently edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver; credits include seven chapbooks (including Dark Phantasms [2017]), Best of Best Canadian Poetry:10th Anniv. Ed., BestNewPoemsOnline, Threepenny Review and 1319 across 40 countries.

However They Keep Just to Themselves

Trees everywhere
On each road, in every yard

Yet only far, and farther away
In a virgin forest can you hear
The songs from a tree’s ringed heart
In the shiny shape of a woman
Sitting close to your chest and
Throat, with all the green spirits

Set free from the carved cleft holes
Resonating in a foreign land