Don't Go Back to Sleep
By Timothy Liu
3/5
()
About this ebook
Read more from Timothy Liu
Let It Ride Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Vox Angelica Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related to Don't Go Back to Sleep
Related ebooks
Ordinary Cruelty Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Waterbaby Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The New Clean Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSpiking the Sucker Punch Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Way We Move Through Water Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Unending Blues: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Commando Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gold That Frames the Mirror Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Standing in the Forest of Being Alive Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJunkyard Ghost Revival Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5MultiVerse Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIs, Is Not Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Crushing It Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Wet Hex Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Rise of the Trust Fall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Strange Light Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Everything Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5No Object Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Our Poison Horse Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLying In: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCome-Hither Honeycomb Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Render Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Doppelgangbanger Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Price of Scarlet: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJuly Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Last Visit Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDialogues with Rising Tides Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Honorifics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Every Little Vanishing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsScandalabra Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Poetry For You
Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Love Her Wild: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Things We Don't Talk About Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Way Forward Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Complete Poems of John Keats (with an Introduction by Robert Bridges) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Thoughts: An Exploration Of Who We Are Beyond Our Minds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dream Work Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You Better Be Lightning Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Collection of Poems by Robert Frost Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Twenty love poems and a song of despair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (ReadOn Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Enough Rope: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Works Of Oscar Wilde Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Odyssey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Road Not Taken and other Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leaves of Grass: 1855 Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilgamesh: A Verse Narrative Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Don't Go Back to Sleep
1 rating0 reviews
Book preview
Don't Go Back to Sleep - Timothy Liu
DON’T GO BACK TO SLEEP
Timothy Liu
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks to the editors of Asian-American Literary Review, The Bakery, Clade Song, Cobalt Review, Conversations Across Borders, Denver Quarterly, Four Way Review, Interim, Kenyon Review, Mandorla, The Margins, New South, Ocean State Review, Plume, The Progressive, Poetry Daily, Rattle, Seneca Review, Smartish Pace, Swink, They Will Sew the Blue Sail, Two Countries, Virginia Quarterly Review, Water-Stone Review, Witness, Yale Review and Zocalo Square for publishing these poems.
The Lovers,
Unsleeping, 4:01 A.M.,
Unsleeping, 5:18 A.M.,
Unsleeping, 5:36 A.M.,
and Without You
first appeared in The Thames & Hudson Project (Fields Press, 2011) by Hansa Bergwall & Timothy Liu.
The Remains,
The Silence
and Classical Musical
will appear in Two Countries: U.S. Daughters and Sons of Immigrant Parents.
The Decision
was reprinted in Pushcart Prize XXXV: Best of the Small Presses (Pushcart Press, 2011).
My thanks also to Bruce Beasley, Roberto Tejada, Henry Israeli, Jimmie Cumbie, Katie Rauk and Mason Gates for their close readings in the making of this book.
All the love in the world to my husband Chris and to my beloved Hansa.
Cover art and inserts by Christopher Arabadjis.
This book is for my Tyger. Yld4e.
CONTENTS
A Requiem for the Homeless Spirits
*
Building Trust
The Decision
I Know My Husband’s Body
The Assignation
Romance
Dream Fragment on the Eve of My Beloved’s Wedding
Without You
The Ring
I Know Your Mouth Better
A Lover Doesn’t Have To
If Everything I Said
Romance
The Gift
A Bed of Ash
The Gift
Romance
The Crisis
Romance
The Lovers
*
First Memory
Classical Music
Another Anxiety Attack
The Silence
Deep Song
Anonymous
Here
*
Unsleeping, 3:25 A.M.
Romance
Without Asking
Unsleeping, 4:01 A.M.
The Crushing Din
The Windows
All Trains Are Going Local
Easy Does It
This Too Shall Pass
The Garden of Earthly Delights
The Assignation
The Betrothal
Romance
Summertime
The Bridegroom
Unsleeping, 5:18 A.M.
Sine Qua Non
The Lovers
Unsleeping, 5:36 A.M.
*
The Remains
The love I talk of is not in the books.
—Kabir
A REQUIEM FOR THE HOMELESS SPIRITS
There is no language to adequately describe the Japanese crimes.
—Ma Xiuyi, Survivor
Head of a Chinese soldier with a cigarette butt in its mouth
(taken by whom?) (given by whom?)
who never got to see the image he’d become
in the papers, in textbooks, online—
an image that has outlasted whatever grave
he did or did not get to have
in this life—
This is not how anyone would want to be remembered—
future generations thumbing through the pages, the