In advance of Something Crosses My Mind 有甚么在我心里一过, Circumference has published two Wang Xiaoni 王小妮 poems as translated by Eleanor Goodman. Goodman writes:

Wang Xiaoni is a poet of small gestures. The energy in her work comes not from grand pronouncements or abstractions, but from the details of daily life. She writes of trains and pockets, cold weather and potatoes, windows and the moon. Yet this poet’s daily life also includes ghosts, ancient scarecrows in dresses, and lotus ponds that bubble black.

And here’s a taste of the poetry:

Ah this mind, there is nothing it likes
it can only like the boundless black depths behind the night sky.

The train is too flustered to pick a track
it grasps the gilded silver-inlaid earth
for fear it will be thrown off, or soar up and crash back down.
Centipedes slide about, landing legs in the air, haha, in the pale moonlit night.

Click the images above for the two poems in full.