After Tiananmen World Literature Today nominated Yibing Huang for a 2017 Pushcart Prize for “Two Poems 27 Years after Tiananmen.” CC Magazine is reprinting one of these poems, “About Freedom,” which Huang wrote under the pen name Mai Mang.
About Freedom Finishing the booze in the dead of night Then smashing the glass This is not freedom Opening the window Jumping out, but forgetting which floor of the high-rise you were on This is not freedom Writing to your beloved Confiding all of your private thoughts This is not freedom Being ignorant among the crowd demonstrating In the streets, opening an umbrella against tear gas This is not freedom Erecting in the square a white plaster statue of The Goddess of Democracy, fitting someone else’s mold This is not freedom Stopping a tank, telling the tank To step aside at the very moment history is about to lose This is not freedom Shedding tears silently on a beach Reminding yourself of the solitary situation you are in This is not freedom Kissing another man’s wife Or flaunting one’s own husband while also betraying him This is not freedom Seeking a spiritual teacher in Tibet Then negotiating a coal business deal at a private club in Beijing This is not freedom Debating passionately with foreigners in a café Over the fate of China This is not freedom Winning the Nobel Literature Prize Or Peace Prize and delivering an acceptance speech This is not freedom Allowing oneself to curl up in prison Letting an empty chair sit onstage This is not freedom Or allowing yourself to sit onstage And letting the prison bed which ought to be yours lie empty This is not freedom S U M M E R 2 0 1 7 | Notebook
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