Illustration by Kurtman Wong
My life has thinned out
like a sheet of moist rice paper.
A single drop of ink bleeds
into an ever-expanding patch of night sky,
while my remaining days shrink
into the empty white space—
the deliberate blank
of a lost Chinese painting.
Yuan Changming grew up in an isolated village, started to learn the English alphabet in Shanghai at age 19 and published monographs on translation before leaving China. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan lives in Vancouver, where he co-edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan. With 18 published collections and 15 Pushcart nominations, Yuan has appeared in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), BestNewPoemsOnline and 2,207 other literary publications across 52 countries. A former poetry juror for Canada’s National Magazine Awards, Yuan began to write prose in 2022; his debut hybrid nove Detaching, ‘silver romance’ The Tuner, short story collection Flashbacks, cnf collection Return to Roots and novel trilogy Towards are all available on Amazon. He has prose work forthcoming in Malahat Review and Globe and Mail.