> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://hyperallergic.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# "Dedication" by Wendy Xu
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/dedication-by-wendy-xu/
- Published: 2014-08-07T14:30:04.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:44:08.000Z
- Description: Our poetry editor, Joe Pan, has selected a poem by Wendy Xu for his series that brings original poetry to the screens of Hyperallergic readers.
- Author: Joe Pan
- Tags: Poetry, Hyperallergic Poetry, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:03 (2014, 2015, part 1)

Our poetry editor, Joe Pan, has selected a poem by Wendy Xu for his [series](http://hyperallergic.com/tag/hyperallergic-poetry/) that brings original poetry to the screens of Hyperallergic readers. For those interested in submitting work for possible publication, email 3–5 poems, with a cover letter, in a single Word document or PDF to poetry \[at\] hyperallergic \[dot\] com.

\* \* \*

![Nancy Holt's "Sun Tunnels" in Utah (photograph by Retis, via Flickr)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2014/02/holtsuntunnels.jpg)

Nancy Holt’s “Sun Tunnels” in Utah (image via Retis/Flickr)

## DEDICATION

Thinking to see them there, captains  
industrious in  
morning sun, I crack the egg’s tender  
yellow head

Love comes to me un-  
repentant, toward it all vectors  
converge repeating, like

moments of necessary form  
I pluck a feather from your neck

On the page one alights without permission, or  
love is  
an assemblage

beginning each day identical, palpable  
remarks of, is it that music or need edits  
my body

two people leave a shopping mall  
with goods, death squad hovering high  
a streetlamp  
Call your mother, stay up late

to watch the neighborhood  
undressing light, like  
multiple phone calls  
connected then  
hung up, get the family together soon, watch

American bison overtake the field  
filling a vehicle lane in early snow  
obstructed I paused

To see it, their dark furs shaking enormous  
out of trees they descended from the line of sky  
respond to a much deeper instinct

we were then back on our way  
input later to the search bar  
I love keywords, like  
love is  
an exodus

I imagine you sleeping, then a pyramid or  
chandelier throwing sunlight

An absence emerges, sharp, I regard the whole  
practice of it

touch it

\* \* \*

Wendy Xu is the author of *You Are Not Dead* (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2013), and two chapbooks. Recent poems have appeared (or will appear) in *The Best American Poetry, POETRY, Denver Quarterly, Guernica, The Volta*, and elsewhere. She is the co-editor and publisher of *iO: A Journal of New American Poetry* / iO Books, and teaches writing at CUNY.