He Xiang lived in Beijing as a child. These poems are part of a chapbook manuscript entitled Emperor Penguins on the Square, which reflects on the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests on the occasion of its thirtieth anniversary as well as the author’s childhood in Beijing and China’s development in the subsequent three decades. Other poems from this series have appeared in The American Poetry Review and Prairie Schooner, which awarded them the Strousse Poetry Award, and will be forthcoming in Bennington Review and Ploughshares.
