The snake’s scales gleam yellow and black.
He’s engulfing the bulgy eyed frog,
whose throat and chest heave raw.
The frog contracts with each gulp, gasping
for air. My heart shamed, I remember night-caught frogs
cooked delicious and spicy by my kindergarten teachers.
I favor the frog now. His croak is music.
His song fills twilight’s veil, a symphony
of double bass in the nearby pond.
I’m not keen on the snake, but I have saved
his molted skin, dragon’s rope, a treasure
in Chinese medicine, to my jewelry box.
With their serpentine bodies, Nüwa
the mother Goddess, and Fuxi the Sage
entwined, they made our ancestors.
The frog is less visible now from the stretch
of the snake’s mouth who is slithering
back to the hole in the granite wall.
The wisest tactic on the battlefield
from the ancient Thirty-Six Stratagems, is to retreat.
I can no longer watch.
Xiaoly Li is a recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship Grant (2022). Her poetry collection, Every Single Bird Rising (FutureCycle Press, April 2023), was a Zone 3 Press Book Award finalist. Her poetry is featured, or anthologized in Verse Daily, Salamander, Saranac Review, Spillway, PANK, Chautauqua, Rhino, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for: Best New Poets, three times a Pushcart Prize, and four times Best of the Net. Her website: xiaolyli.art
