Aiden Heung
Year of the Dragon
I’ve learned to count each beginning
by the things I left behind:
this year, a country; I’m alive.
A fair trade I think—fairer
if I can cut my body from its shadow.
All the lost still come to me, false
sensations from a limb I had.
I open my wound to remember
the knife. I become
a doll unstitched, still—
I want to live, again & against.
If I could give a name
to this feeling, I’d call it love-me.
Love me. I’m snow
on budding trees. I’m February.
Aiden Heung (He/They) is a Chinese poet born in a Tibetan Autonomous Town. After years of working as a traveling salesman, he recently relocated to St. Louis, USA, where he is a MFA candidate at Washington University. His poems are published in Kenyon Review, The Australian Poetry Journal, The Missouri Review, December, The Harvard Review, Poetry International, The Cincinnati Review, Poet Lore, etc. His first book All There Is To Lose is the winner of 2024 Levis Prize In Poetry, chosen by Ilya Kaminsky, and will be published by Four Way Books in Spring 2026.
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