Changming Yuan


Were ‘I’ to Join the Word: An Anagram Poem

The flute would become futile
The printed could turn intrepid
The gale might grow agile
The glue would feel like guile
The stratagem might smell like a magistrate
The brush could look like hubris
The barter would sound like an arbiter


In This Digitalized World

Birth is a wonder
Death is a hunter
Nothing is in between
Except a number after a number


English Absurdities

There might be love in between gloves
But no egg in eggplant, or ham in hamburger

English muffins did not originate from England
Nor French fries from France

Sweetmeats are actually candies
While sweetbreads are meat though not sweet at all

Readers read, singers sing
But typewriters do not type, nor fingers fing

A mouse can multiply into mice
But a grouse never into grice

People may recite at a play and play at a recital
Their noses run while their feet smell
They park on the driveway, or drive on the parkway
Ship by truck and send cargo by ship

Teachers may be taught, but preachers are never praught
One goose may stand between two geese
So may one tooth between two teeth
But a booth can never be between two beeth

If vegetarians eat vegetables
What would so-called humanitarians do to humans?



Changming Yuan, author of Chansons of a Chinaman (2009) and co-author of Voices from the West Coast (2011), is a three-time Pushcart nominee who lives in Vancouver and has poetry appearing in Barrow Street, Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, dotdotdash, London Magazine, Otoliths, Southern Ocean Review and nearly 380 other journals/anthologies worldwide.
 
 
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