I’ve read of the crackdown
on the Church in China, how the crosses
have been removed, the face
of Christ turned Xi Jinping’s, slogans
of the CCP hung at the entrances
of the churches. Lapsed as I am, outraged
less by the blasphemy than the violation of human rights,
I cannot help but turn my hands
into fists, tight as though clasped in prayer.
I cannot help but kneel
and close my eyes, entreat someone
whom I’m not sure is there.
I cannot help but recall a verse
from Matthew, wonder how it sounds in Mandarin,
what it looks like in Hànzì:
where two or three are gathered...
holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Columbia University School of the Arts. His work has been featured in numerous literary journals and magazines, and he has won or placed in various literary contests. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, he won Northwestern University Press’s Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize contest in 2023, for which he will have his debut chapbook, This is My Body, published in 2025. Currently, he serves as a Zoeglossia Fellow and lives in San Antonio, Texas.
