including the one who spelled it with y.
All I talk about is wealth-hoarding w/
Chinese characteristics, not to be confused
with love-deprivation. Some auntie somewhere
is learning the importance of saying “I love
you” to her children & grandchildren. It’s that important
to some of us now. More than a decade ago
I dreamed about loving what literature does
but did not know how to say, mine. Well, this Jane
reads Yu Xiuhua in Ming Di’s English mostly,
the original with Purple Culture’s help. This Jane translates
her own unauthorized, hornier, gayer version. There is no pre
-position between “sleep” & “you” because the two
bodies are pressed that close (despite the geography).
Or, Jane, you learned how to fuck somewhere,
but that is not the same as sleep. The look
of sleep hangs on you, almost mesh. Across the city I love in,
aunties sleep with men they don’t love in condos,
parlours, because they love themselves & their children
they feed more than this country hates migrants.
I make money from poetry, sometimes, & sometimes
still wish I had nabbed more of his home-grown shrooms.
This Jane was just that good at creating a fantasy, that fuck
& sleep & love could live, soundly, in a single room.
Photo credit: Joy Gyamfi
Jane Shi is a poet, writer, and organizer living on the occupied, stolen, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples. Her debut poetry collection echolalia echolalia (Brick Books, 2024) was shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award.
