“New Soul” Joanna Zhang Poetry

Space Odyssey

On Earth, in my bedroom, on the cusp of death,

An inscrutable, rectangular

black stone

appeared in front of me,

Its shadows seeping into my soul.

It struck me in my dream,

And sang to my lungs

A hymn of elegy and unanswered questions––

Flinging me beyond my dying body

Into a different spacetime in God’s sensorium.

The mollusk of spacetime spun me endlessly,

its spiraling arms unraveling the weight of the world––

the child’s swollen, bloodshot eyes glittering through her

shattered house and her parents’ bombed corpses;

The hospital filled with whispered last breaths and unuttered goodbyes;

The empty wooden chair, with wrinkles of sealed memories, at dinner table––

I saw how we bury the nameless with the names we love.

We are all bewildered.

Bewildered by the graves we dig,

Bewildered by the silence that follows,

Bewildered by the eventual vagrancy of our own soul,

when no one stops to ask,

Why?

Around me, matters imploded,

plunging into bottomless voids

The magic of time slowed near planets,

as if honoring the dead;

interstellar ripples swayed like eulogies

on distant waters, liquid heaven.

I grasped the surging waves that

accelerate universe’s expansion,                                                     

that weave the lives of infinite atmans into one immortal stream.

Surrendering, I fitted my scattered atoms

into the vast darkness of heavenly seeds.

And when I finally opened my eyes from this lifelong dream,

with my flesh cocooning in the warm earthly sunshine, the strelitzia

left by the black stone graced over my soul, soft, yet

piercing.

Waltzing with Our Past Souls

My departure in autumn was a phantasmagoria

         haunted by the ghosts that lived within

the rocks that rained down.

         The rocks smashed my dreary mind

with the image of a tiny earth, a snowing earth

         that kept on swirling within my chest. I counted

the layers of the rocks: so literal, so civilized:

         1. earthly norms, 2. expectations, 3. desires

4. loneliness.

The earth expanded, and so did my

breath shortened, my sickened body

abandoned on an isolated island far away

from home. The beating

of my soul threw my existential dilemma into

the surrounding ocean and muted the snowing world in

silence. Cold,

drowsy silence. Yet, suddenly,

I heard you playing cello–– a cello that lived within

your heart from lightyears away. That heart.

Your heart.

You.

I felt you–– the familiar texture of your soul.

As the particles of our souls, mine and yours

from two islands separated by an ocean of planets,

entangled,

the earth and the island slipped away

into that passed-away summer day. That summer

before my departure.

The snow, heated by the hot Shanghai temperature,

transformed into the pouring rain that we

waltzed in. But wait.

Everything feels different now––we no longer live

within the two angels

from our past.

So instead, we danced with

the ghosts of the two girls, girls who were like sunshine

but were passionate about rain; girls whom we are so familiar

with but are so distant from; girls who were killed by

our own hands, their blood tainting our soul.

The girls liked rain, liked singing in

the rain and counting the clouds on the blue,

blues sky. They said, because rain was like art being alive and the

music played by earth; clouds were

like unreachable dreams of mankind; and rain and clouds together

were like soulmates holding hands in

eternity.

As the ghosts chased the prehistoric rain into an ocean of

classical music and poetry and literature,

she and I stood there.

We stared at the nostalgic moon in a clear, sunny sky.

No rain poured down.

No clouds appeared in the sky.

We begged universe to entangle our solemn particles with

their nubivagant particles, the ones in which the literal, countable

rocks were an abstract weight of existentialism and swirling

duets.

The universe responded,

we can’t do the spooky action when the other particles

live in your particles’ memory. 

But at least we, the past soulmates, are back together,

entangled.

But what if the transcendent phantasmagoria

of our entanglement was also, indeed, only a dream

played in my sole mind?

Whore, Saint, Monster, Mother, Wife

 I lay beneath him, hips pressed to dust.

I tamed the wild man, made him human,

but for that, I was cast aside.

Holy harlot, sacred whore—

I bestowed Enkidu wisdom, civilization, friendship, yet he

Cursed me for leading him to mortality.

Even now, they take what they need,

then shame us for giving it.

I rise from the dark,

a mother who mourns,

but mourning is monstrous when it is mine.

I grip a sword,

but steel in my hands

is never called justice—only venom.

Even now, they name us vipers,

call us witches when we fight,

call us weak when only Beowulf is fated to be the

hero.

I wait amidst suitors,

spinning time into thread, unraveling by night

what men rewrite by day.

Odysseus wanders and Telemachus sails,

their kleos sung across the waves,

while my name hangs like a shadow at their feet.

Faithful wives and responsible mothers, they call us,

as if faith were our only virtue––

I walked through fire, bare feet, bare soul,

flames licking my wrists,

fingers folded into prayer.

I did not burn, yet still,

I was killed, by my husband Ramayana

himself.

The trial never ended.

Even now, hands hover over heat,

We are told to prove our worth,

and bleed on oxide marital beds.

Whore, saint, monster, mother, wife—

they etch our names into legend,

then bury us beneath it.

In the darkest corners under the brightest sun,

we burn, we wait, we drown, we fade—

but not quiet, not clean, not forgotten.

Somewhere beneath the stories they tell,

we are still here,

sharpening our names into daggers,

etching our own myths into the bone of humanity.

We are Shamhat, one without her own name, Thryth, Penelope, Sita—

we are every woman they tried to break,

and we are rising. 

Her Soul defeated the Petals of Flesh

She lies on the cold salty beach, eyes closed.

Alone, a single body, on the mass achromatic earth.

Her flesh gradually shattered into red petal pieces

with a scent of rose oxide mixed with sweet blood

that carried her countenance away.

The petals traveled through the howling wind,

forming words that met her deep, dark pupils.

do not stare at your soul...

More words slowly appeared

do not maturize your brain;

do not romantize your heart;

do not express in your eyes…

The fused petals shattered, danced, rotated

and resided on her breath, a biting butterfly, whispered:

Then you could be truly happy.

She floundered,

deep, dark, lachrymose pupils stared blankly at the words that

Ambiguously blurred into the ethereal sky.

With bloody red and ocean blue melancholy,

The shivering body within her consciousness gradually rose.

The body gazed at the endless ocean––

The roaring eagre and the howling swirls

which seem to be her true destiny.

Maybe I was born to suffer––

swallowed by the disease of contemplation,

wrestling with the knife of words,

pining in the dream of the connection of soul and love.

Tears flowed out of her pupils,

         expressive pupils as deep as the ocean that

burnt her past conflicted self

         into ashes of silent air

and pupils as profound as the gigantic universe

         that scripted her predestined color to differ from

the monotonous norms of a deadly society.

The tears resided on her delicate lips that

Slightly curved upwards on the side,

A quiet moment that outshined the ocean,

A bitter smile captured by the sky.

No,

I love my life.

I love suffering as much as I love the ocean waves

Suffering is the greatness I was born with.

It separates me from the mundane corpse

That lives without living.

You cannot defeat me

I am happy.

Her pupils met her radiant soul.

As the depth of the pupils absorbed her soul

The petals crushed into pieces

         resurrecting her countenance.

She smiled, both the corpse and the soul smiled,

undefeatable.

Dear Homeless Pilgrims

Those travelers on the ocean,

each deserted on their own ship,

lost on foreign islands

You’re on your own now

drifting and wandering away from

their hometowns––

homeless travelers,

homes were temporary.

Not settled in zephyr,

A headwind splashed down,

A gust, a gale,

Then tailwind––

all inevitably set in their journeys,

scripted by the transcendent mind who

manipulates young souls.

They question themselves as

they drift in an ocean of bewilderment,

eyes covered with fogs

of nostalgia, but

You’re on your own now

the dangers were deadlocks;

The arduous journey toward a key destined

to leave inscrutable scars.

Some travelers were defeated––

They ate Helios’ cattle, greedily opened

The bag of Westwind gifted by Aeolus, and were

Swallowed by whirlpools of trepidations,

wailing in God’s threads of fate; yet,

Some travelers pined in swirls, humbly buried their

Desires of kleos, and

endured

As they were pushed into the unknown––

fear, tears, determination, chivalry, and

temporal zephyr, everlasting kleos––

Through the baptism of time,

He who embraces loneliness,

caresses those past scars,

purifies earthly bothering,

listens to the beating of his soul,

Is fulfilled with calmness and peace,

And granted the fated journey back home.

Dear all homeless pilgrims—

You’re on your own now.

Simply Surviving, Not Living

The day it all suddenly clicks was the day I realized that

I am simply surviving, not living.

I’m still young, I assuaged myself. But,

in this age of innocence,

My blunt words already betrayed my soul.

My cowardness exposed my naked organs

under the spotlight

at places where the androids’ chorus

stripped me naked,

dissected my soul, and reconstructed my

cranium with their magical spells.

As I denied and jeered at that nonconforming organ

with narcotic mirth,

the organ died in ashes and slipped away from

My drunk corpse,

Abducted by not only the illusional worldly eyes

but by myself, leaving the floor an invisible mess

Of blood.

I stared into my-self in the mirror

The deep dark pupils of that girl were shrouded

with disequilibrium and lost. The androids

justify their pompous manipulations as love––

love of me, love of humanity, love of civilizations.

But this is not love indeed–– love is not

examining my naked organs and spitting at my raw

soul with a scent of wine and salt; love is not

forcing me to sing their unsung mantras

as if I’m their hired actress; love is not

pushing me on a precipice with no

paths but an abyss ahead; love is not

smothering that past radiant soul

into a deadly corpse,

a corpse like the ones that the androids have…

I can’t breathe.

Tittering between the outside and the inside

The future paths laid ahead––

Black and grey and blue and red––

Twisted, turned and intertwined like melancholic snakes.

I drove the clockwork back to dawn

When all paths congregated into a playground

of iridescent yet ephemeral joy,

But the clock smirked and slapped me in the face.

All I could do was writing and gulping story water.

I indulged in the sea of knives constructed

by my own words and a transcendent realm

Formed by a constellation of

Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Dumas, Camus

With tints of pink and purple joy.

In those realms, rid of desires and worldliness,

I transiently obtained back my pursued soul and past gaiety.

Sadly, this is all silent rage and tears––

A letter that countless children secretly hide

Under pillows; Yet, this achromatic letter

With I am simply surviving, not living

Doesn’t fit with their childish, iridescent

Pillow cases.

Goodbye

She visited last night: the dream

—it’s a sun—

As I woke up, cocooned in the warmth

of familiar air, the moon

Sat beside me, braiding my

Hair, and the nostalgic shadow

Expurgated the clear image of my

soul, punching my mind with mysterious

Pain.

She left, and

they left, leaving no trail

but everything behind.

Yet my own mind dangles

In the air of silence,

Hallowing with intangible yet

Vivid pain. She left with the flowers

but left me the burdens of withered

leaves. 

New Soul

This collection embraces the pain of loss and transformation while searching for connections that transcend the mundane material world, whether through god's sensorium in the universe’s expanse, the quiet, lingering echoes of past souls, or silent tears of contemplations. In surrendering to suffering and embracing change, we find power—not in erasure but in the act of remembering, questioning, and ultimately, writing.

About the Poet

Joanna Zhang was born and raised in Shanghai, China, before moving to the States to attend boarding school. She is currently a student at Milton Academy and is invested in creative writing and literature in her free time. Her favorite authors are Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, whom influenced her to view the world with moral complexity and apply that to her characters. In the past three years, she found poetry as a torch that helps her navigate hardship and express her raw emotions and ideas, a space where philosophy and emotion intertwine. She wrote more than fifty poems, received several Gold Keys from the Scholastic Arts and Writing Award, and is passionate about publishing them to convey meaningful messages. Joanna also wrote a novella called Caroline, which delves into the psyche of a Nazi general who becomes a Soviet spy to highlight deep wartime and postwar international trauma.