Dangling

On a Certain Afternoon

on a certain afternoon

I, on a sudden, actually smelt something

like a rat

from the fifth collection of poetry

by a poet

I had been passionately in love with

on a certain afternoon

a mass poetry magazine, just bought

was ripped to pieces by me

and a newspaper, known to all, that had just arrived

was carried by me to the toilet...

Yang Xie, born in 1972 in Wenling, Zhejiang, China, is an award-winning poet whose poems have been published in China, Australia, America and Vietnam, a number of them, translated by Ouyang, in the Age, Kenyon Review and Indiana Review, a few years ago. A most recent collectoin of poetry, Poems of Yi Sha, Shu Cia and Yang Xie, translated by Outang Yu, was published in 2013 by Vagabond Press in Sydney, Australia. Yang Xie's collection of short stories, titled, dao jinmao dasha qu (Going to the Prosperous and Golden Building), written in Chinese, was published by Kaiming Publishing House in 2013 in China. This collection contains 69 poems by him.