Proof

They say my great-uncle read foreign books
in a mud house in Nanking,

plowed his twenty acres, listened to
rare birds, disobeyed

the tides' yes and no. One day he knelt in the street,
sign around his neck

that said: Traitor. Little Red Book spread like wax
over him, even

beech trees turned. He labored with peasants, hands
turned rough.

He must have had eyes like globed fruit.
One day he disappeared.

But enough. I am standing in the dirt in La Jolla,
perpendicular to the earth,

weeds exploding, rows of corn like foreign books,
sky with hoops of clouds.

He is hanging from a mud house in Nanking,
perpendicular to the earth.

Our angles are equal, therefore we are parallel.

Then there must be two birds, two shores,
two deaths.

Victoria Chang
Ploughshares
Kevin Young, Guest Editor
Volume 32, Number 1
Spring 2006

Copyright © 2006 by Emerson College.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.

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