Outside the window, sky and earth exchange silver. In the moonlight I forget I’m human.

~Wang Xiaoni

Outside the window sky and earth exchange silver. In the moonlight I forget I'm human.

- Wang Xiaoni, White Moon

Outside the window Sky and earth exchange silver. In the moonlight I forget I'm human.

Wang Xiaoni, White Moon

Wang Xiaoni in Gucci Spring 2019

outside the window sky and earth exchange silver. In the moonlight I forget I'm human

Wang Xiaoni, White Moon

SEEING THE OCEAN FROM A NIGHT FLIGHT

Everything becomes small only the ocean makes the night’s leather clothes open up the further out it spreads. Flying north to the right is Tianjin to the left is Beijing two clusters of moths flinging themselves at fire. Then the East China Sea suddenly moves the wind brings silver bits that can’t be more shattered and many thick wrinkles whip up I see the face of the ocean I see the aged seashore trembling and hugging the world too tightly. I have seen death but never seen death come back to life like that.

WANG XIAONI

Outside the window Sky and earth exchange silver. In the moonlight I forget I’m human.

Wang Xiaoni, White Moon

The cigarette your mother holds shudders. It's a cigarette incessantly afraid. Your father like a church packed with true believers stands silently by aged stairs. You are their mural you are already sliding from their wall. For your sake all their lustre is peeled away. The dark clouds in your body are right now pouring on their sleeves. You are motionless I know unconsciousness has called you back again. In your heaven with the weight of heavy oak gates the angels too have folded up their wings. Obscure fragrance woven by Chinese herbal medicines. In invisibility I sound flights of wooden stairs hearing emptiness. When one bell is tolled a million others incline heart-rates accordingly. But on the confused, snow-banked road the only one thinking to shed tears is me. You know that the world, the world is elliptical and will never, ever be just.

wang xiaoni, “your heaven”

Down a long, long corridor I keep walking…

—A window straight ahead so bright it hurts the eyes, reflective walls on both sides. Sunlight, me, I stand with the sunlight.

—The sunlight is so intense! So warm people stop in their tracks, so bright people hold their breath. All the light in the universe collects here.

—I don’t know that anything else exists. There is only me, leaning on the sunlight, stopping for ten seconds. Ten seconds can be as long as a quarter century!

At last, I rush down the stairs, pull open the door, dash about in the spring sunlight…

I Feel the Sun by Wang Xiaoni (Translated by Eleanor Goodman)

Xiaoni Wang & Wang Zhenzhen by Ruo Bing Li for Marie Claire China - April 2019

But my two hands lie idle in China's air. The tabletop and the wind are both pure white paper. I let my significance happen only at home.

Wang Xiaoni from her poem, ‘Starting Anew as a Poet’ (transl. by Eleanor Goodman)

“Outside the window sky and earth exchange silver. In the moonlight I forget I’m human.” — Wang Xiaoni, White Moon (via crimsonkismet)

art by Adrianna Vanderstelt

Xiaoni Wang & Wang Zhenzhen by Ruo Bing Li for Marie Claire China - April 2019

Wang Xiaoni in Alexander McQueen Spring 2019