Iron is probably the image with which Zheng Xiaoqiong's poetry is most associated. That hard, cold, sharp, and often rusty iron represents the mechanization of society. Her poems, with strong contrasts, personifications, and broken phrases, show how industrialization has made human beings part of the machine: nameless, a number on a conveyor belt, without rights. Against this dehumanization, Zheng counters, often through natural elements, the