Hat
/Siyun Fang
The hat on my head wants to jump off the cliff each time the wind rises.
It wants to pour the darkness down its throat, into its belly.
It wishes to hold the small fate of a blade of grass in its arms.
It does not want to be worshipped by me.
It wants to be more like wicker, bending down,
looking at those naked insects, flowers and plants.
Scraps of paper, bloodstains, also have their own grief.
It will never know this head held in its mouth
is in fact a turbid teardrop.
I sit at the mountain pass.
I know it’s a bird hoping to return to its flock in the air,
understanding its boredom with me.
At the moment when it is blown away by the wind,
as a person who once was ambitious and arrogant, I have to bow to it—
after I pick up that hat,
I can see myself and my childhood in it.
Author’s Commentary: When I wrote this poem, I considered this piece of work as a poem which would comply with the subject of "nature" and "environment.” I was trying to expand on the meaning of writing and traditional narratives on “nature” when I was writing about a hat, because to me, nature itself is everything.
Siyun Fang is a poet and translator. A graduate of Centre College and New York University, she is currently attending The New School MFA Program. Her poems have appeared in Rigorous, Tule Review, In Parentheses, Seven CirclePress as well as other journals and magazines. Her research interests include the modern and contemporary poetry, poetic theories, theories of narrative, American fiction, as well as dramatic arts.
