ENTER A SUBMISSION TO PLUME

Weijia Pan

Plume
Ultimatum
Ultimatum
November 24, 2023 Pan Weijia

Ultimatum

If I forget one character a day
I will have forgotten Chinese
by the end of 2042.
 
Sooner or later I will forget
my quarrel with my father,
 
I will forget if
I ever wrote to you.
 
And the new language
I will have acquired
 
will not be the same
as the one that bit me.

Weijia Pan is a poet and translator from Shanghai, China. His poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, from AGNI, Boulevard, Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, Georgia Review, New Ohio Review, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. A third-year MFA in poetry at the University of Houston, he is the winner of the 2023 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize and his first collection Motherlands will be published by Milkweed Editions in 2024.

Plume: Issue #148 December 2023