He Xiang lived in Beijing as a child. These poems are part of a chapbook manuscript titled Emperor Penguins on the Square, which reflects on the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests on the occasion of its thirtieth anniversary, as well as Xiang’s childhood in Beijing and China’s development in the subsequent three decades. Other poems from this series have appeared in The American Poetry Review and Prairie Schooner, which awarded them the Strousse Poetry Award, and will be forthcoming in Bennington Review and The Rumpus.