like the rivers

DONG LI    OF RIVERS: A CHAPBOOK


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you walk down lenox ave
baffling in a crowd of beaten men
like the rivers
you rise over the whitened earth
with your mud and mourning
funeral in harlem
last shine of the day fades and folds
into flowers swinging all night                                                                              
to a simple taste of blues
like the rivers
a literary sharecropper
a sewer dweller
a traveler with no longing deferred
like the rivers
you wonder how big is the big sea
a montage of sorts
tom-tom drums in vogue
like the rivers
this new song this world
now brilliantly black
the rivers
the rivers
you are coming through





DONG LI was born and raised in the People’s Republic of China. His honors include fellowships from The Corporation of Yaddo, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, OMI Ledig House, Vermont Studio Center, Millay Colony and DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) as well as grants from The Whiting and Henry Luce Foundations. He was Colgate University’s Olive B. O’Connor Poet-in-Residence 2013-2014. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Kenyon Review, Conjunctions, Black Warrior Review, Hotel Amerika, Denver Quarterly, Guernica, The Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. Li is also Editor-at-Large for the international translation journal Asymptote.

SELECTIONS FROM OF RIVERS APPEAR IN VOLUME 49.3