“Visualization of Blues (a cherita)” by Jianqing Zheng

After Alison Saar’s Backwater Blues

Alison Saar, Backwater Blues, 2014, woodcut on paper; chine collé

Life is like
a house flooded
at midnight

to be a pool
of backwater

to trap life

Jianqing Zheng’s poetry collections include The Dog Years of Reeducation (Madville, 2023) and A Way of Looking (Silverfish, 2021), which won the 2019 Gerald Cable Book Award. He has published numerous ekphrastic poems in journals including Birmingham Poetry Review, Mississippi Review, New World Writing Quarterly and The Southern Quarterly. A recipient of the 2024 Mississippi Arts Commission poetry fellowship, Zheng teaches at Mississippi Valley State University.

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