Jenny Xie
​Jenny Xie was born in Anhui province, China. She is the author of EYE LEVEL, a finalist for the National Book Award and the recipient of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets and the Holmes National Poetry Prize from Princeton University, and THE RUPTURE TENSE, a finalist for the National Book Award and the CLMP Firecracker Award. Her chapbook, NOWHERE TO ARRIVE, received the Drinking Gourd Prize. She has been supported by fellowships and grants from Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Kundiman, New York Foundation for the Arts, the Vilcek Foundation, and the Jerome Foundation. She has taught at Princeton and NYU, and is currently assistant professor of Written Arts at Bard College. She lives in New York City. Source
Naturalization
His tongue shorn, father confuses
snacks for snakes, kitchen for chicken.
It is 1992. Weekends, we paw at cheap
silverware at yard sales. I am told by mother
to keep our telephone number close,
my beaded coin purse closer. I do this.
The years are slow to pass, heavy-footed.
Because the visits are frequent, we memorize
shame’s numbing stench. I nurse nosebleeds,
run up and down stairways, chew the wind.
Such were the times. All of us nearsighted.
Grandmother prays for fortune
to keep us around and on a short leash.
The new country is ill-fitting, lined
with cheap polyester, soiled at the sleeves.
Published:
2017
Length:
Regular
Literary Movements:
Contemporary
Anthology Years:
2024
Themes:
Identity
Immigration
Memory & The Past
Literary Devices:
Alliteration
the repetition of the same letter or sound at the beginning of words appearing in succession
Personification
the attribution of human qualities to a non-human thing
Slant Rhyme
A rhyme where the words have similar sounds in their stressed syllables.