Khaty Xiong

Find and share the perfect poems. translated from the Macedonian by the author When at evening I hear the voice of my dead mother, I summon deer to my side— they who understand all the languages of fear without saying a word. I would invite them into the courtyard of quiet changes and ask them about the sins of the unborn, about the distance between the blood of two enemies after the war. I would ask them to lock the silence— secret of the open eyes.

Khaty Xiong is the author of the poetry collection Poor Anima (Apogee Press, 2015) and the chapbooks Ode to the Far Shore (2016), Deer Hour (2014), and Elegies (2013). Her poems have appeared in Poetry magazine, Gulf Coast, pulpmouth, The Adroit Journal, The Margins, Lantern Review, and elsewhere. Xiong, who is Hmong, earned a BA from Ohio Northern University and an MFA from the University of Montana.

For a time the home was lost to me my mouth forged in the night as I dreamed away the barriers—stars lengthening the line of my gaze beryl bones rushed to storm— To my eternal right clouds in immediate rotation mother mutating past clay and desire too light to form too dead to surrender like meat made tender by memory— effortless my head at the helm towards pardon my hands passing through water her eye on the wretched edge seeding air with every intention of life— such mischief even from the...