Shirley Xiao, Shenzhen College of International Education

My page, ignorant with its void,

held firm the pools of paranoid,

My tongue, thrice taught in language fair,

collapsed a vowel in mid-air.

And ancient starlight mocked at me,

with blazing vaults of legacy,

And roads ahead, not taken quite,

had meandered through a lifelong’s plight.

Where shadows crisscrossed could not mark

out loose entity from the dark.

Thus shyly this ill-fated curse,

strolls through the making of my verse.

Notes:

This poem is about my fear of writing as I compare my present self to childhood self, and as I worry about the pressure that may come my way in the future.

I strictly follow an iambic tetrameter in rhyming couplets — a rigid form that limits the word choices yet provides me with new approaches of self-expression, which I rejoice in.

The poem begins with “my page” and “my tongue.” A “page” is where beautiful literary works are born, yet the alliteration of /p/ in “pools of paranoid” presents an unwelcoming plosive sound. The “page” remains blank with “void,” because I am unable to write anything. A “tongue” is the medium of speech, transforming thoughts into sounds. However, the personification of “collapsed” implies that the words at the tip of my tongue suddenly turn into silence, because I worry too much.

“Where shadows…from the dark” is a daring metaphor, because it may seem vague and bizarre. Shadows, mysterious and wavering, share the same qualities with thoughts and ideas. They rely on real things, or “entities,” to exist and have a shape. Similarly, thoughts only become convictive if they are endorsed by life experiences. At my age, despite my ambition to ponder history and future, social issues and personal plights, I still need to follow the regular path of life, unsure if my thoughts were too naïve or idealistic.

This is the “ill-fated curse” on my writing. Without enough experience, how can I produce convincing content? This couplet uses enjambment. As the sentence runs from one line to the next, a sense of continuity is formed, highlighting that the process of experiencing and creating text is interconnected and should not be separated.