Ran Zhao
Ran Zhao is from Hong Kong, and currently studies in Rhode Island. Her poetry has been recognized by the UK Poetry Society, Bennington University, Hollins University, and the New York Times Magazine, and her favorite time of the year is bullfrog season. You can find more of her words at ran-zhao.weebly.com.
Story with a Dog
Telling me this, my grandfather started crying.
I didn’t want him to cry.
He had many wrinkles by now; some days,
sitting by the balcony in the strong afternoon light
and scouring his teeth methodically with a pinky,
I thought he looked like a shriveled plum.
I didn’t want to imagine him a child,
crouched shin-deep in the swollen river,
the puppy clinging to the crook of his arm
to peer at the water’s white galloping—
and later, in the small gray room, the towel spread out,
the boy and the dog both startled into jumping by its sneeze.
Even when he gave me, almost apologetically,
a red packet filled with crisp yuan bills
of the denomination he’d never see as a child,
I’d imagine asking him, do you think
you can buy back people’s love?
I was trying very hard to hate him,
and couldn’t bear to imagine him a boy.
Walking in the Slipstream
It’s not sweet. Not sweet so much as warm like honey,
dense like golden reed thickets stumbled through on
hot summers, your fingernails sticky with tangerine peeling,
your hand in the hand of another girl who was
back then still smaller than you. The past like
finding a skull in the creek that smells of nothing.
Like a wound made of air from a blade that you’ve lost.
You want to tell her to watch her feet, to hand you
her shoes and socks before she wades into the cold
bright water. Hard to remember how the falling feels
until you fall. The past a tunnel you can shout
down into and hear your voice echoing,
the two people at the end crouched at a creekside,
tadpoles darting in their merged shadow,
the old skull in their hands no longer smelling of
the animal it was from. The precipice doesn't exist yet;
not till they see it. No thorns in the field, only crushed
clovers. If she steps into the water again
she’ll fall - but how could you warn her?
Your voice carries through the tunnel only as wind.
When they hear it, neither turns.
Story with a Dog
Telling me this, my grandfather started crying.
I didn’t want him to cry.
He had many wrinkles by now; some days,
sitting by the balcony in the strong afternoon light
and scouring his teeth methodically with a pinky,
I thought he looked like a shriveled plum.
I didn’t want to imagine him a child,
crouched shin-deep in the swollen river,
the puppy clinging to the crook of his arm
to peer at the water’s white galloping—
and later, in the small gray room, the towel spread out,
the boy and the dog both startled into jumping by its sneeze.
Even when he gave me, almost apologetically,
a red packet filled with crisp yuan bills
of the denomination he’d never see as a child,
I’d imagine asking him, do you think
you can buy back people’s love?
I was trying very hard to hate him,
and couldn’t bear to imagine him a boy.
Story with a Dog
Telling me this, my grandfather started crying.
I didn’t want him to cry.
He had many wrinkles by now; some days,
sitting by the balcony in the strong afternoon light
and scouring his teeth methodically with a pinky,
I thought he looked like a shriveled plum.
I didn’t want to imagine him a child,
crouched shin-deep in the swollen river,
the puppy clinging to the crook of his arm
to peer at the water’s white galloping—
and later, in the small gray room, the towel spread out,
the boy and the dog both startled into jumping by its sneeze.
Even when he gave me, almost apologetically,
a red packet filled with crisp yuan bills
of the denomination he’d never see as a child,
I’d imagine asking him, do you think
you can buy back people’s love?
I was trying very hard to hate him,
and couldn’t bear to imagine him a boy.
Walking in the Slipstream
It’s not sweet. Not sweet so much as warm like honey,
dense like golden reed thickets stumbled through on
hot summers, your fingernails sticky with tangerine peeling,
your hand in the hand of another girl who was
back then still smaller than you. The past like
finding a skull in the creek that smells of nothing.
Like a wound made of air from a blade that you’ve lost.
You want to tell her to watch her feet, to hand you
her shoes and socks before she wades into the cold
bright water. Hard to remember how the falling feels
until you fall. The past a tunnel you can shout
down into and hear your voice echoing,
the two people at the end crouched at a creekside,
tadpoles darting in their merged shadow,
the old skull in their hands no longer smelling of
the animal it was from. The precipice doesn't exist yet;
not till they see it. No thorns in the field, only crushed
clovers. If she steps into the water again
she’ll fall - but how could you warn her?
Your voice carries through the tunnel only as wind.
When they hear it, neither turns.
Walking in the Slipstream
It’s not sweet. Not sweet so much as warm like honey,
dense like golden reed thickets stumbled through on
hot summers, your fingernails sticky with tangerine peeling,
your hand in the hand of another girl who was
back then still smaller than you. The past like
finding a skull in the creek that smells of nothing.
Like a wound made of air from a blade that you’ve lost.
You want to tell her to watch her feet, to hand you
her shoes and socks before she wades into the cold
bright water. Hard to remember how the falling feels
until you fall. The past a tunnel you can shout
down into and hear your voice echoing,
the two people at the end crouched at a creekside,
tadpoles darting in their merged shadow,
the old skull in their hands no longer smelling of
the animal it was from. The precipice doesn't exist yet;
not till they see it. No thorns in the field, only crushed
clovers. If she steps into the water again
she’ll fall - but how could you warn her?
Your voice carries through the tunnel only as wind.
When they hear it, neither turns.
Ran Zhao
Ran Zhao is from Hong Kong, and currently studies in Rhode Island. Her poetry has been recognized by the UK Poetry Society, Bennington University, Hollins University, and the New York Times Magazine, and her favorite time of the year is bullfrog season. You can find more of her words at ran-zhao.weebly.com.
Ran Zhao