PLANTING BUTTERBEANS
When I was a young lad, I had the wonderful experience of planting something,
then watching it grow.
I’d drop the seed into the rich dirt, and let nature take its course.
The rain and the sun played a huge role in their natural growth.
So I sat by and watched God and mother nature perform their masterpiece.
If Knot
Yi Wu
Spring has wiped clear last bits of frost to get an improved eyesight
Knowing end of a long queue before her is coming
After fruits have over-riped and frozen from daylight
Like how photos taken of untimely moments remain after lens is clean
Her first show gives snowy images, snowy images preserved in iceboxes
Where thermostat’s pointer swerves below thirty-two
Prolonged gaze, an involuntary one, gives a shadow, indelible
It is what it was
And I, followed by a contour, two-dimensional
And turning into darkness, fearful
Of standing up yet too weak to fall asleep soundly,
Similarly cannot run,
Like how rock stars fall from grace to the stage floor when shoelaces
Entangle with rings on groupies’ notebooks awaiting autographs, tripping loudly
In this noise of broken drums and sound systems, reminiscent
Of what children hear of an industrial city.
The shadow has quietly replaced me
Waiting at the Wrong Track
I perched on a tilting café stool next to my fiancé, trying not to taste the greasy McChicken sandwich I washed down with a bitter double espresso chaser. We were dismayed that McFood was the finest culinary experience the St. Charles train station had to offer. In the foreground, sleek bullet trains bound for Paris screeched in, loaded up with sun-kissed Mediterranean vacationers, and zipped away from Quais E, F, and G. Assuming our train would leave from one of these tracks, we settled in.
As I tuned out rapid-fire French spoken at adjacent tables and broadcast over the intercom, I overheard a language that carried me home. The slow-moving dialogue was peppered with wide open vowels and harsh R’s, the consonants of Des Moines, Boise, and Wichita. My eavesdropping tendencies kicked in; I became a stealth voyeur, comforted by an oasis of familiar auditory cues.
A twenty-something American couple with backpacks and roll-away luggage in tow, was also awaiting a train over delicate white espresso cups. She was pale with dark wavy hair framing her baby face. A scarlet-colored Euro-tied scarf draped around her neck. He was part punk rocker, part frat boy with cropped hair, blue jeans and a black sweatshirt. Upon closer inspection, I discovered a baby stroller among their sea of luggage. They had started early, determined that their bundle of joy would fall in love France as they had.
Life is Breathed Into a Hotel Room
The hotel room is large & the walls are covered with peeling white & blue pinstripe wallpaper; it is desperately clinging on. The side table is littered with miniature alcohol bottles, scraps of paper, a pack of cigarettes & a lighter.
She’s sitting on the bed, bottom-less with a black bra, casually taking drags from a cigarette.
Her legs are modestly crossed with her opposite hand between them, in a nonsexual way. Her back is to the large window with the beige curtains drawn back. The room is faintly lit with most of the light casually bleeding in from the outside world. The living, breathing city down below more than six feet beneath our feet. All warm bodies coming & going, each with their own existence.
Miniature clouds veil her painted red fingernails for seconds before dissipating. Making this moment in time as fickle & elusive as the smog billowing from the mouth of a smoke stack. It curls and dances in the air before melting into nothing.
I’m sitting across the room in an uncomfortable chair, also bottom-less with my legs crossed. I don’t know how long we’ve been sitting here like this. I’ve been using the ashtray as a makeshift timepiece; it’s almost full. I think it’s past midnight.
Bill’s Constellations
for Billy Collins
Whatever actually happened at Yang-ping’s house
during that winter, there were seasons before and after
in which nothing happened. Rowboat’s skiffled along
rain-washed river bottoms, rocky but not impassable.
There wasn’t always a drunken moon or salty stars
in a black bowl of sky. A heron followed the boat
seeking clues about the lady in the wide-brimmed hat,
a blue ribbon trailing the wind like its mate’s feathers.
The tail of Scorpio slashed the wild sky. The woman
blinded by icy stars, could have been mistaken for a wizened
Chinaman, thousands of years old. The silent river spilled
no secrets about temptation or regret. The woman who navigated
these waters held a compass that could turn her boat around,
change to any direction. She planted her long legs solidly
on its wooden floor, a book open and faced down
beside her written by a man who’d traveled similar waters.
Many winters before, too many to record in a hand-painted chart,
a Chinaman paddled a river, his oars dripping stars.
Continue reading
by Warwick Newnham
They steamed mid-morning into the outer reaches of Singapore harbour having circumvented, where possible, the fleets of pair trawlers and gill netters and fish trawlers working from the shelf right up to the Port of Singapore Harbour port limits and with the ocean made from glass and gods’ own face shining down on them they formed up to a flotilla of green of squat modern prawn boats. They co-ordinated manoeuvres on Ultra-High-Frequency scramblers on company channels and High-Frequency sets are tuned as one to Radio-rock-n-roll-Singapore, Numbah-One-Pirate Radio:
Rolling Stones; ‘Loving Cup’
Gunners; ‘Sweet Child Of Mine’
Ramones; ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’
AC\DC; ‘Givin’ The Dog A Bone’
-The UHF dials in like a phone to scramble with an electronic squawk-
‘You get me on this one there Noddy?’
‘No Moose……..you can’t call me that now; I’m an ocean going master. Back 2 U’