Simon Shieh 诗集 Master 购买链接：https://www.sarabandebooks.org/titles-20192039/master-simon-shiehSimon Shieh is the author of Master (Sarabande Books, 2023), chosen by Terrance Hayes for the Kathryn A. Morton Prize. His poems and essays are published in Poetry, AmericanPoetry Review, Best New Poets, Guernica, and The Yale Review, among others, and have been recognized with a National Endowment for the Arts Literature fellowship and a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation.
By Simon ShiehNo. IEvery night we listento his favorite songs.The kind of music youwant to hear when your countryis at peace, but you’re told to diga grave in the desert sandanyway, to gather the bonesof your countrymenlike the alphabet of a languageyou will never understand.The kind of musicthat might come from a parkedcar whose window you are toldto shatter with the buttof a black flashlight.No. IINo flashlight. No north star.I paint myself black and wait for himwith the lights off.He enters with a girl dressedin red lace. They dance to a songshe is too young to remember.In the darkest corner of my shadowhe undresses herwith the tip of an admiral’s sword.The noiseshe makes, like a flutecaught in a typhoon.As he comes, he begs to see herin the moonlight, so I open my eyes—four brightcrescent moons.No. IIIThe earth makes no mistakes.Caught in the headlights, a deer’s shadowbolts for the woods.He says our bodies must bemalleable, like water.I was foolish then.When he swam through it late at night, the surface of the Pacific was like hudreds of silk blankets.He stripped them awayfranticallylooking for something.I filled my lungs with water, sangsongs I did not understand.I bathed in the low tide, hopinghe would find me.No. IVHe walks into his house carryingthree portraits, all men. On the stereoa woman begs a man’s forgivenessto a beat that makes the floors tremble.In the pitch black, he lays the photoson the floor next to each other,scratches each man’seyes outwith a knife, but each time theyreappear— the whites of their eyesgrowing brighter and brighter. Furious,he puts his knife through the stereobut the woman’s voice only growslouder, more desperate.No. VHe lights a candle on the table in front of me.Sickened by my own body, I have not left this roomin three days. Black shins, right eyeswollen shut. In here, no windows, no sky.To spite me, he hid the moonin the shadow of a jackrabbit, the deepest cratersin its eyes. When I beg him to show me the nightsky, he slices its body open in front of me, spillsits insides onto the wooden table.Dark blood glistens in the candlelight.The body asks a thousand burning questions.
[诗人简介]Simon Shieh, 当代美国诗人，今年九月刚刚推出诗集《大师》（Master）, Sarabande Books出版社发行。该诗集由Terrance Hayes 举荐，曾获得2022年度Kathryn A. Morton诗歌奖。其作品还散见于各种刊物，如《诗刊》（Poetry）, 《美国诗歌评论》（American Poetry Review）, 《诗坛新秀》（Best New Poets）, 《格尔尼卡》（Guernica）, 《耶鲁评论》（The Yale Review）等。曾获得国家艺术与文学基金会的奖励，并荣获诗歌基金会Ruth Lilly诗歌奖。
