Bitterness in the Mouth, and: A Life Unexperienced Before

Bitterness in the Mouth, and: A Life Unexperienced Before Zhang Zhihao (bio) Translated by Yuemin He (bio) Keywords poetry, Zhang Zhihao, translation, Yuemin He, speaking, separation, authorship, pandemic, silence, nature, life Translated from Chinese by Yuemin He BITTERNESS IN THE MOUTH Your mouth feels bitter if you haven't spoken for longNot speaking for a long time, this bitternessoccurs, like a gallbladderfull of darkness and in darkness tremblingSunshine repeatedly washes the building's exterior wallsA ponytail palm on the balcony leans to the sun and blocks the windowRoots of the weeping ficus in the flowerpot quietlymove; silentgreenery no longer knows how to speak, nor moan or groanI once cleared my throat at midnighttrying to summon the man who couldn't speakEnormous calls echoed in my chestBitter water surges, and the sea of bitterness is vastyet I disagree this is all the bitterness of life End Page 95 A LIFE UNEXPERIENCED BEFORE There is a life we had never experiencedSay kissing with a mask separating our facesand touching the familiar and strangewith gloves on. Say yesterday afternoonwe tried to recognize each other while the lake separated uslike two people separated between life and deathonly our reflections undulating in the cool waterWeeping willows sprout along the banks of Dusi LakeThe higher the dawn redwoods reach the greener they lookThere is a life at least I am not ready forSay as a poetI have used three times the word"separate," as if Iwere separated from this poemThe fourth "separate"is for you to use to explain:what is poetry and what is lifeI try to persuade myself to love myselfbut after repeated disinfectionwhat in me and my lifeis allowed to survive at all End Page 96 Zhang Zhihao zhang zhihao 张执浩 was born in Jingmen, Hubei, province in 1965. One of the most renowned contemporary Chinese poets, he is author of ten poetry collections along with several books of fiction and essay collections. Zhang has won almost all the prestigious poetry awards in China, including the annual Chen Zi'ang Poetry Award and the Luxun Literary Prize for poetry (Chinese equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize). Currently, he is editor-in-chief of Chinese Poetry, a quarterly poetry magazine in Wuhan, China. Yuemin He dr. yuemin he is a writer, translator, and editor based in Virginia. She has published on East Asian literature and visual art, Asian American literature, Buddhist American literature, and composition pedagogy. Her writings appear in The Emergence of Buddhist American Literature (CUNY), Religion and the Arts, and Teaching Asian North American Texts (MLA 2022). Her poetry translations have been anthologized in Oxford Anthology of Modern and Contemporary American Poetry (2nd ed.) or have appeared in more than twenty literary magazines and journals, including Metamorphoses, The Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, and Silk Road Review. Currently, she is an English professor at Northern Virginia Community College and serves as an editor for The Northern Virginia Review. Copyright © 2024 The Massachusetts Review, Inc