Day 4, Poet 4: Jasmine An

Monkey Is Unrepentant And So Am I
 
I am underneath
the mountain with you,
Sun Wukong.
Buddha's ring finger on my chest,
his thumb on yours.
We can be proud together
that the world was enough
afraid of our noise
that it put its giant palm
over our mouths
and froze that way.

Previously published at Pittsburgh Poetry Review. 


Jasmine An is a queer, third generation Chinese-American who comes from the Midwest. Before graduating from Kalamazoo College in 2015, she also spent time in New York City and Chiang Mai, Thailand, studying poetry, urban development, and blacksmithing. Her chapbook, Naming the No-Name Woman, was published as the winner of the 2015 Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize. She has been awarded residencies at the Sundress Academy for the Arts and Hedgebrook. Her work can be found in HEArt, Stirring, Menacing Hedge, Pittsburgh Poetry Review and Southern Humanities Review, among others. Currently, she lives in Chiang Mai continuing her study of the Thai language and urban resilience to climate change.