Moonlight Rhapsody No.49

By Jennifer Wong

If life were not a luminous halo
then what is it?
A semi-transparent envelope
without a love letter;

a piano stool, a broken vase?
All metaphors, pared down,
offer little understanding
than what we already grasp.

At night, the sea looks so pleasant and calm
I don't believe it will drown.
I walk on barefoot, hearing the waves,
my thoughts crawl back
ceaselessly into the past.

Jennifer Wong is a Hong Kong-born writer and translator. She is the author of two poetry collections. Her poems have also appeared in literary journals. She reviews regularly for Asian Review of Books. Jennifer studied English at Oxford and received an MA in creative writing at the University of East Anglia. She worked as writer-in-residence at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. Jennifer is currently studying for a PhD in Asian American poetry at Oxford Brookes.