Today's poem is by Xiaoly Li

Portrait of a Woman in 1969
       

Her wrinkles, rings of a tree,
trace her decades of teaching.

Her eyes flare when Red Guards snarl, spit,
throw mud, and pound her. Several, her students. Red
bands circle their young arms.

Sunlight, she refuses to kneel.
Her hair becomes salt marsh weeds.

Dusk creeps in. The filthy pond
smells metallic, where another
professor jumped and sank

after such torture. Red
Guards lie under old ginkgo,
gasp and sweat.

Still standing, she sinks qi into her
Dantian, nullifies

the striking force, channels their madness
into the forgiving earth. The secret training

of Wushu casts her into a statue.
Her lips clench; eyes squint, sneer, sneer.

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Copyright © 2023 Xiaoly Li All rights reserved
from Every Single Bird Rising
FutureCycle Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission