XIAOLY LI, FEATURED IN THE NEW OCEAN STATE REVIEW

Fixed

In this twilight of equinox,
I’m unbalanced.

On the way home in the car
all I hear is my puppy’s cry.

Are you still in pain? Are you bemoaning
what is neutered, forever gone?

I lower the window, see a perfect moon.
The dusky wind sweeps

your confused face in a plastic cone
like an Elizabethan royal.

I wish you would be quiet, not disturbing
my heart, as if questioning me

for whose convenience,
whose Cone of Shame?

Xiaoly Li on “Fixed”

I’ve witnessed our pup’s prolonged, soft wailing on only two occasions. The first was on his initial evening away from his mother and littermates, nestled on my lap. The second occurrence is depicted within this poem.

We all fulfill our duties, and sometimes, it entails their sacrifices, exemplifying the love pups bear towards us.

Xiaoly Li is a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship Grant (2022) recipient. Her poetry collection, Every Single Bird Rising (FutureCycle Press, April 2023), was a Zone 3 Press Book Award finalist. Her poetry is forthcoming, featured, or anthologized in Salamander, Saranac Review, Spillway, PANK, Chautauqua, Rhino, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for: Best New Poets, three times a Pushcart Prize, four times Best of the Net. She lives in Massachusetts where her photography has been shown and sold in galleries in Boston. Xiaoly received her Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and her Master’s in computer science and engineering from Tsinghua University in China.