Anagramming ‘Love’: a Bilingualcultural Poem
by Yuan Changming
This poem is inspired by Qi Hong （祁红 )
In English, ‘love’ is meaningless if anagrammed
But if I add a letter, it will become a magic word
Full of possibilities as in the case, say, where I
Take off my glove, use a clove or olive to write
A novel about how to solve my problem of ‘I’
As a vowel in a hovel in its laevo form; whereas
In Chinese, 爱情 [love] can be embarrassing, for
If I remove two strokes from the root-character &
Add them to my feeling, 爱情would become受精
[Fertilization]; so, I’d avoid saying爱你 [love you]
For if two strokes were taken away from the root-
Character for 你, it would mean 受伤 [geting hurt]
Yuan Changming co-edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan. Writing credits include 12 Pushcart nominations for poetry and 3 for fiction besides appearances in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17) and 2149 other publications worldwide. A poetry judge for Canada's 44th National Magazine Awards, Yuan began writing and publishing fiction in 2022, his debut novel DETACHING, 'silver romance' THE TUNER and short story collection FLASHBACKS are available at Amazon.