Simon Shieh
Simon Shieh is a poet, essayist, and educator living in Beijing. A lifelong martial artist, Simon competed in his first professional Muay Thai fight at seventeen years old in Shanghai. The day before he turned twenty-one, Simon suffered his first and only loss by knockout in Brazil. Soon after, he turned away from fighting and found poetry. The work of Jericho Brown, Eduardo Corral, Louise Glück, Terrance Hayes, Ocean Vuong, Lucie Brock-Broido, and many others opened the doors for his poems.
Reading List
Forte
At the height of it, mid-practice, I stepped into the bathtub holding a metronome to my chest, blasted cold water. When you found me, you pulled me out dripping wet Simon Simon Simon Your voice, a trickle of sparks in the leaves. Simon, you cannot play Mozart with your mouth closed, cannot heal a bruise […]
Drawing of a Skeleton
He sleeps with the lights on. Night comes for him playing a stringless harp. Branches snap— the wind licks its broken fingers. ζ After a night of rain, he wakes paralyzed—his jaw clenched, his hands, two dark prison cells filled with gunfire. ζ I learn how to pronounce his name, how to say nothing to […]