Postcard from China, by Greg Huteson

Chinese-style panda painting, by artist unknown, ForUs Fuyou Liangpin Company (Beijing). Date unknown.

​Postcard from China

The seven scalloped leaves are almost red.
They’re set about the leftward-leaning tree –
its silver bark all hung in wispy strips –
and crowd the blemished postcard’s custard sky
while contoured rocks like bulbous oyster shells
are lodged with gravity against the trunk,
are bent on adding to its slender lean.
Two panda cubs, one high one low, now hug
this gray, degraded pole. Among the crimped
and rigid leaves, they intend to loop and tag.
The mother of these twins reclines at left
on amber earth near sprouts of dark bamboo.
These patchwork pandas form a line that leans
across the tree and shapes a clumsy X.
But lift this postcard from the desk to see
just what it marks, and there! The back’s a blank.

Greg Huteson

Greg Huteson's poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from SOFTBLOW, Better Than Starbucks, the Saint Katherine Review, The Road Not Taken, The Honest Ulsterman, and other journals. For the past twenty years, he's lived in China and Taiwan, and his writing often reflects these contexts.