Two Poems By Connor Watkins-Xu
Jorge Díaz from Santiago de Chile, Chile, Front loading laundry machine, CC BY-SA 2.0
One-Sided Conversation
对对 she says, say that,
even when you don’t understand.
It’s alright, you can give it a try.
Nod vigorously, keep eating,
with the stomach of a deer,
but not too fast. Don’t let
your plate get empty. It won’t
stay that way. Just another day
she forecasts this fluent future,
all the visits home to Shenzhen.
对对, but I don’t understand
the picture of life I’m holding.
God, did you forget to attach
the file? Did I miss a lesson?
If you come back tomorrow,
I’ll regret the way I’ve spent
my days stuck in the dryer,
shrinking, dyed red, like
the vintage T-shirts I leave
at the bottom of the basket
each laundry day that passes.
Surely you’ll give me a few
more days to make it right,
if I know anything about you.
对对, but each day makes me
wonder if I ever met you,
if I was always right to say
I had known you like
secondhand smoke,
not the intoxication
I felt kneeling in worship
until I didn’t. The words,
the music: wax in the ear.
Have you vanished
like friends across the miles?
Did you pass my wife the torch?
Where have you been
hiding in my house? 对对.
Maybe your face is unswept hair
on the bathroom floor.
Your arms are fridge handles,
your legs a bookmark in
a half-finished book. Your eyes
are in a light switch, and your
ears are stains on the carpet.
The rest of you is stuck somewhere
in my bloodstream––hit a snag,
took a wrong turn in my veins
trying to settle in my brain.
How do I get outside this
revolving hotel room of loss?
How can it feel like home?
对对, but O Yahweh,
have you made me like
an eagle circling empty sky
between the world and sun?
Perhaps our love is like
the character 鹰,
a goose and a question,
lingering there, two birds.
对: duì, “right, yes (agreement)”
鹰: yīng, “eagle”
What Do You Want?
Lying just far enough apart
that our faces aren’t globs
of acrylic paint, I ask, 你想要什么?
and she tells me my pronunciation
has grown so clear. At night,
I scrub the piled dishes while she washes
her face, then set out her mirror
and rose lotion. This morning
I brushed her hair, held sections
to the light to see the balayage begin.
We’re both too kind, echoing
ageless phrases one after another.
We go back and forth, like a Chinese game
of Please Let Me Pay The Check.
谢谢！不客气！要客气！好客气！
Always such big plans for the day.
Sometimes we do seven things, sometimes three:
Studying vocabulary for her PhD.
Watching documentaries on street food
with rice and beef or rare takeout
that takes her back to Shenzhen.
Video games, card games, looking
into the exchange rate of talk and sleep.
Learning the dances her students do
in the mornings. Seeing me dance to
*NSYNC makes her fall over laughing.
The ice cream she chose solely on name
yesterday surprised us both––Pluto Bleu.
Sometimes she runs up to me from across
the room to squeeze tight or call me
大考拉. When we first met, she said
she valued her free time. Now she’s
always trying to give more of it away.
As I write, I’m looking over at her
(there’s something we like about
seeing each other from far away)
and I ask if she can remind me
how she answered that question
however long ago. She says 我要你,
and of course, I repeat the phrase clearly.
你想要什么?: nǐ xiǎng yào shénme?, “What do you want?”
谢谢！不客气！要客气! 好客气!: xièxiè! bù kèqì! yào kèqì! hào kèqì!, “Thank you! Don’t mention it! I want to thank you! You’re too kind!”
大考拉: dà kǎo lā, “big koala”
我要你: wǒ yào nǐ, “I want you”
About the Author
Connor Watkins-Xu holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland and a BA from Baylor University. He is a 2025 Writing Fellow at the Jack Straw Cultural Center. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, North American Review, Redivider, Gargoyle, Hawai'i Pacific Review, The Hong Kong Review, Salvation South, and elsewhere. His manuscript has been named a semifinalist for the Berkshire Prize and The Brittingham and Felix Pollak Prizes in Poetry. Originally from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, he lives with his wife in Seattle. Find him on Instagram @connorwatkinsxu or connorwatkinsxu.com.