Poetry

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Cleo Adler holds a B.A. in English and an M.A. in Comparative Literature. She writes poetry, essays, and reviews about travel and introspection, memory, and music. Published in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Voice and Verse Poetry Magazine, Tentacle Poetry, and Literary Shanghai. She works between archives and libraries.

 

Three Questions

 

‘L’ is a sly and sluggish sound crawling out from the tip of the tongue,

as in ‘lax’, ‘listless’, and ‘nonchalance’, where ‘nonchalance’

is the mask worn by men whose tongues curl back

and roll out an ‘r’ in a matter of milliseconds that measures their effort.

 

How many words can we learn humming Simon and Garfunkel songs?

 

With my ears, I almost feel by touch their mouths stretch,

lured to suck their smacking lips and gnawing teeth.

I’ll never make their tongue mine,

but mine can coil around theirs and glide along slippery waves.

 

When I was four, I hated drawing curves so much that I cried

when copying the number ‘3’ ten times but

in my youth, I flaunted cursive writings in my homework.

It’s a tempting exercise to sketch a map of a walnut

since there’s no single way of making out its furrows.

How I dream of claiming it my laurel.

 

What good do words do?

 

They think theirs open up a meadow of daffodils

where you see the sun in a new light.

I say they are a desert where what we do is walk in circles

because that’s how our body works, the same way

my skin is tanned and my tongue is stiff.

 

Everyone prefers sunshine that’s brighter, warmer, more upfront,

but what I covet is one I’ll never be, nor be a part of

— although it grows in me—

for all my pestering and whining,

for the sake of the sense or eros.

 

Are words a fish or a fish trap?

 

It’s not about how to get the fish and forget the trap.

I have trouble with spelling, so to me,

a nicely woven basket does little harm; what I want to

forget is the fancy that with it a fish will be given.

 

At the river near where I live, there are men who

catch fish and put them into large foam boxes.

The next moment, they toss them to egrets.

 

Let us go fishing there one day.

Continue reading

Yuan Changming hails with Allen Yuan from poetrypacific.blogspot.ca. Credits include 12 Pushcart nominations & 14 chapbooks, most recently Homelanding. Besides appearances in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), BestNewPoemsOnline & Poetry Daily, Yuan served on the jury and was nominated for Canada’s National Magazine Awards (poetry category).

 

 

A Triword Poem: for Qi Hong & All Other Separated Lovers

 

to                     get(her)           to-gather

 

 

~

 

 

Siamese Stanzas: Snowflakes

 

~

 

Love Lost & Regained: 2 One-Sentence Poems for Qi Hong

 

1/ Love Lost: a Rambling Sentence

 

How I sometimes wonder

Whether it is because you wear

Your years so well or because the years

Wear you so well that I fell in mad love with

You after as long as 42 years of separation without

Knowing each other’s whereabouts, again at first sight

With the whole Pacific Ocean between our shortening arms

 

2/ Love Regained: a Periodic Sentence

 

At a fairyfly-like moment

On a bushy corner of nature

Preferably under a tall pine tree

In Mayuehe, our mecca or the hilly village

Adjacent closely to the bank of the Yangtze River

With myriad tongues from my hungry innermost being

Each eager to reach deep into your heart, where my soul’s

Fingers could caress every single synapse of your feminine feel

Between the warmth & tenderness of love, across the Pacific & the Pandemic

I’ll join you

~

 

I/我 as a Human: a Cross-Cultural Poem

 

1/ Denotations of I vs 我

 

The first person singular pronoun, or this very

Writing subject in English is I, an only-letter

Word, standing upright like a pole, always

Capitalized, but in Chinese, it is written with

Seven lucky strokes as 我, with at least 108

Variations, all of which can be the object case

At the same time.

Originally, it’s formed from

The character 找, meaning ‘pursuing’, with one

Stroke added on the top, which may well stand for

Anything you would like to have, such as money

Power, fame, sex, food, or nothing if you prove

Yourself to be a Buddhist practitioner inside out

 

2/ Connotations of Human & 人

 

Since I am a direct descendant of Homo Erectus, let me stand

Straight as a human/人, rather than kneel down like a slave

 

When two humans walk side by side, why to coerce

One into obeying the other as if fated to follow/从?

 

Since three humans can live together, do we really need

A boss, a ruler or a tyrant on top of us all as a group/众?

 

Given all the freedom I was born with, why, just

Why cage me within walls like a prisoner/囚？

 

~

 

Lesson One in Chinese Character/s: a Bilinguacultural Poem about Heart

 

感：/gan/ perception takes place

when an ax breaks something on the heart

闷: /men/ depressed whenever your heart is

shut behind a door

忌：/ji/ jealousy implies

there being one’s self only in the heart

悲：/bei/ sorrow comes

from the negation of the heart

惑：/huo/ confusion occurs

when there are too many an ‘or’ over the heart

忠：/zhong/ loyalty remains

as long as the heart is kept right at the center

恥：/chi/ shame is the feel

you get when your ear conflicts with your heart

怒: /nu/ anger influxes when slavery

rises from above the heart

愁: /chou/ worry thickens as autumn

sits high on your heart

忍:/ren/ to tolerate is to bear a knife

straightly above your heart

忘: /wang/ forgetting happens

when there’s death on heart

意: /yi/ meaning is defined as

a sound over the heart

思: /si/ thought takes place

within the field of heart

恩: /en/ kindness is

a reliance on the heart

 

~

 

Directory of Destinies: a Wuxing Poem

– Science or superstition, the ancient theory of the Five Elements accounts for us all.

 

1 Metal (born in a year ending in 0 or 1)

-helps water but hinders wood; helped by earth but hindered by fire

he used to be totally dull-colored

because he came from the earth’s inside

now he has become a super-conductor

for cold words, hot pictures and light itself

all being transmitted through his throat

 

2 Water (born in a year ending in 2 or 3)

-helps wood but hinders fire; helped by metal but hindered by earth

with her transparent tenderness

coded with colorless violence

she is always ready to support

or sink the powerful boat

sailing south

 

3 Wood (born in a year ending 4 or 5)

-helps fire but hinders earth; helped by water but hindered by metal

rings in rings have been opened or broken

like echoes that roll from home to home

each containing fragments of green

trying to tell their tales

from the forest’s depths

 

4 Fire (born in a year ending 6 or 7)

-helps earth but hinders metal; helped by wood but hindered by water

your soft power bursting from your ribcage

as enthusiastic as a phoenix is supposed to be

when you fly your lipless kisses

you reach out your hearts

until they are all broken

 

5 Earth (born in a year ending in 8 or 9)

-helps metal but hinders water; helped by fire but hindered by wood

i think not; therefore, I am not

what I am, but I have a color

the skin my heart wears inside out

tattooed intricately

with footprints of history

Continue reading

DS Maolalai has received nine nominations for Best of the Net and seven for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in three collections, “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016), “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019) and Noble Rot (Turas Press, 2022).

 

 

Machinery moves.

 

lowering their winches,

cranes toil

and hoist skyward. the city

ticks taller, as mountain

and glacier-

spun time. from the top of this hill

and across the horizon

machinery moves

in a restful

slow motion,

swinging its balance

like the fat backs of spiders,

tucking untidiness

to the corners

of maps.

 

 

Daydrinking

 

it’s good – drinking wine

on these hot afternoons

on these days when we have

to be nowhere. we sit on the porch

at our second-hand table

and watch people walking

and coming from markets;

pushing strollers and pulling

at dogs. we get up and make

toast; bring it out with some ham,

old roast chicken and freshly

cooled bottles. occasionally

come out with coffee

or tonic on ice. white wine

all summer like snowmelt

from alleys; as yellow as suns

through the rise of the smoke

from that factory over the river.

as yellow as corn and as rippling

in pour as a field of it flowing to breezes.

you lean back, exhale, pull

at ivy which clings to our brickwork.

I look at your neck in the arc

of its stretching, like a cat standing up

on the back of a torn-apart couch.

 

 

Him.

 

it’s not that I’m an atheist

really – just don’t

want Him coming

to my wedding.

for christ sake –

it’s important to me

but that’s not the same

as Important –

 

not in the way

of a famine, of floods

running streets. He’s got better

to do (given grand schemes

and everything). if He’s real

then I shouldn’t take

his time. and if people maybe

stopped inviting Him

so often to weddings

 

then maybe He’d

stop making sunsets

so wonderful for them.

stop making birdsong

and mountains and rainbows

and other tacky garbage

for people to admire.

prevent some disease

and stop killing the innocent;

 

let’s get Him less lyrical.

put Him to work.

 

 

Maj 7th

 

we are in the back of this bar

up in phibsborough centre,

near the bohemian grounds.

he is back for a wedding –

we are getting a drink

and waiting for friends

to come meet us.

he talks about life now

as it happens near

amsterdam – has been studying

law there a year. talks about girls

and then tells me my scar’s

looking well – I must have

my own stories. I touch it – my finger

runs fishhook to eyebrow. feels folds

in the skin where the stitching

made crumples and seam. it’s true –

I look dashing when light

falls at angles. my eyes arch

and spiral, as if to a maj

7th chord. he rolls up

a cigarette, licks paper,

lights up and hands it to me

when I ask. it’s a light beerish saturday

evening in dublin. there’s a stretch

to the weather and clothes

have been drying on lines.

 

 

25 feet

 

my balcony faces a bicycle shop.

people come by with bicycles – men

pick them up, twist their spanners,

test tensiles, pump wheels.

hand cash out for bicycles,

trade like hard cattlemen. a ten

year old girl sits on top of a white/pink

and spun apart engine. kicks forward

and rolls up the pavement

quite slowly and wobbling for 25 feet.

behind her, her father stands

next to the salesman. they watch

as she goes and comes back.

Continue reading

DS Maolalai has received nine nominations for Best of the Net and seven for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in three collections, “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016), “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019) and Noble Rot (Turas Press, 2022).

 

A settle of saturday morning

 

breakfast with baker

by fegans in the settling

feathers of saturday.

mostly clear, though the sky

drops occasional spatters

of rain out of grubby

grey clouds; a fumbling toss

of a ten penny coin. we are both

having coffee. I’m eating,

jack’s waiting on breakfast.

two tables over, a french couple kisses

with hands in each others’

jeans pockets. it’s may

now – the summer has sparked

a good light out, like all of the lighters

outside all the bars

every evening at 7 o’clock.

like lights outside cafes at 11am

between french girlfriends’ fingers

and in waitresses hands on a break.

a pigeon walks under the table

and picks at a dropped piece

of bacon. it steps around ash

and is fat grey and silver.

it’s remarkably clean

for a bird.

 

 

Some flattery.

 

“look”, I said eventually –

he’d caught out the lie

about something I’d put

in the cover –

 

“I don’t want to sound

as ungrateful as I think

this will sound,

but it’s not as if anyone

really reads poetry.

of course I still hope

you should take

both the poems,

and take where I mentioned

my rising respect

for your press and achievements

as an editor

with the implication

it might be

some flattery. it’s not

 

as if either of us

hoped our careers

would involve some small magazine

printed way out in sligo. well,

maybe you did – I’m sorry;

I had aspirations.

and it’s not either

that I don’t

really want you

to publish me –

 

just, you know, you should

know that, given the option

I’d have gone probably

with faber

or someone

else first. shit.

wouldn’t anyone?

they pay.”

 

 

Nature will do things

 

the last guy who lived here

grew garden potatoes

and carrots. now flowers sprout up

in that corner each spring – all white

and bright yellow,

like tropical frogs

climbing stems.

I have let them go wild,

but nature will do things,

even when left

out untended. once

a goose landed,

falling like knocked-

over furniture. pawed about,

biting at seedlings and dandelions

while I stood by the door jamb

drinking water and watching it move.

 

 

Freedom, unpredictable.

 

kids in august summer

and sunning the park – just like dogs;

so unpredictable! and I never know,

walking from work,

what they are going to do

next – if they are going

to yell something

or kick a football at me. and yet,

it’s all so fine – it’s freedom, unpredictable

and I’m not feeling threatened.

I was like that myself once, though in my mind

I haven’t changed much

in 15 years, beyond perhaps gaining

a tolerance for alcohol.

 

it comes especially

when I see people I went to school with

at that age; like a brick

falling out of a house, I remember being part

of a whole

structure. the one

from when we all

were holding each other. it’s strange.

and yet, I was not an animal,

and they are not

either;

 

more like flowers. like when you drop seeds

in the garden and forget about them,

trying to make a meadow. staying inside

for weeks. the strong ones surviving, the weather

all closed. one day you open your door

and outside it’s all poppies,

grown and rained on. wet to a height

of five feet, perhaps more.

 

 

Manifesto

 

theme grows like plants

out of eaves, out

of gutters and fascias. it is not

laid like bricks – it’s not planned,

it is natural leaf. theme turns

to the sun and from dirt

in the corners of structure.

I cannot stand gardens. love dandelions,

thistles and daisies. divisions

on motorways, hemlock

wild garlic and nettles where rats

can lurk, biting and pissing.

the space between pavements

where people pass walking

and don’t look around, look ahead.

Continue reading

Xing Zhao is a writer and translator. He has written about contemporary art, culture, design, travel, and LGBTQ for publications including Architectural Digest, The Art Newspaper, Time Out, and OutThere. He is interested in ideas such as memory, exile, elsewhere, and displacement. He lives in Shanghai — a city that is not his home and writes in English — a language other than his native tongue. He is working on a collection of short stories and a long story, both with sentiments that permeate his poetry.

 

I Smell Him

 

I smell him

on me,

on the blue-black corduroy jacket

I’m wearing,

in the back of the closet where it’s hiding.

 

His smell stays with me

as though he was sitting next to me,

eyes

behind his thick black-framed glasses

a quiet gleam,

lips fluttering

are wings of a butterfly

dancing in a rainforest of luminous green.

 

What is he thinking? I think,

his mind is a storming sea,

drawer inside drawer

insider drawer

to which I do not have a key.

Mandalorian, Skywalker, and Jedi,

KAWS, The North Face, and Noguchi.

Words pour out of him and

I feel dizzy.

I wish

he’d stop speaking.

Does he know

I’m not at all listening?

 

The jacket

is the color of night

where blue enters black

and black becomes blue,

nocturnal animals sing songs,

rivers run across fields.

 

Lingers the smell of him,

of green moss grown on spruce

the morning after rain,

of ink smudged

on fingers,

of bergamot

blent into black tea,

of tobacco and stubble,

of him sitting at the bar of the coffee shop

when the barista says,

“He looks so clean.”

 

I want to know

if he knows

that he smells of rain,

of spring,

of a white T-shirt

billowing on a line in the wind,

of arms wrapped around my back

squeezing so tight

I hear a crackle in my spine.

 

In his jacket,

do I smell of him?

knowing his knows,

thinking his thoughts,

feeling how he feels,

when he’s sitting across the table,

our legs so close

they are almost touching,

when I lean over his shoulder and

pick up the book he’s reading,

when we walk side by side

to the park,

coffee in hand,

the sun is gold,

when he so casually hands me his jacket

the color of night,

the scent of fire,

and says,

“Yours it is.”

 

~

 

Green Island

 

 

My eyes are full of blue,

my heart is full of blue,

in this seaside town where

sky is made of glass and

waters are turquoise,

people cool as sea breeze.

 

You beam your twinkly eyes

in this dazzling midday sun,

I have springs to my steps

looking for my coconut drinks.

You say, “This is like Europe,” and

I say, “It is Malaya.”

On this island of green,

palms idly swing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Continue reading

Russell Grant is a poet from Durban, South Africa, living and working in Shanghai. He teaches high school English Literature and is the leader of the Inkwell Shanghai Poetry Workshop, as well as Head of Workshops for Inkwell Shanghai. His work has appeared in A Shanghai Poetry Zine and the Mignolo Arts Center’s journal Pinky Thinker Press.

 

After the Fact

 

– for the fallen at Zhengzhou

 

There is water in the creek, and in the sky,

and on his face, he who I watch from above

 

striding abreast the flow which

lumbers towards the Huangpu, mounted

 

by creek birds that hole up in the day

like forgotten promises.

 

He lumbers, too,

sucking at anxious air; drawing ancient breath;

 

burdened: 70% water, 30%

fermented fruit and guilt

 

The surface of the creek bristles in the rising wind

while a ginger cat suspends its cool indifference

 

to chase down shelter

in a vacant guard hut.

 

To the West a father

mounts a placard at a subway station exit,

 

sometime after the fact

and waits for her.

 

Above this, above all of this,

again the coiling sky spits, weeps

 

on towers, on parks, on runners and bikes,

on leaves loosened from their trees and

 

scattered on the concrete,

on the fathers of drowned daughters,

 

and on ginger street cats bristling in the wind

like the ruined surfaces of creeks.

 

 ~

 

Double-slit Experiment

 

• A sonnet for K, who helped me see again

 

Sunlight on the river blinks,

tracing waves both endless, and startless:

I observe their immaculate leaps

up from pregnant nothingness to sudden

bright peaks

shedding all possible past and future ways.

 

At night I trace your sleeping breath

like a pilot mapping your tireless rhythm

guided along all possible decisions

coming finally on gasping reality to rest:

 

Please forgive me my delayed noticing

and allow us sweetly in this moment to collapse

into a warm and most unambiguous

darkness. To settle the score between known and perhaps

and denounce all possible worlds but one

so we may find stillness before our breathing is done.

 

 ~

 

Longing

 

• A Daoist Ode to Condiments

 

Longing is the sauce of all unhappiness

She said, the clock adjusting like an uneasy guest

I search for a complement to your ungarnished bliss

 

Be like water, sufficient and saltless

Add nothing to the heartless breast

Longing is the sauce of all unhappiness

 

I grow weary of your philosophied spareness

Is there really no additive, no further drop to test

my resolve to find a complement for your ungarnished bliss?

 

Be like water, sufficient and saltless

Add nothing to the heartless breast

Longing is the sauce of all unhappiness

 

My deepest want, my soberest wish, is

that you quiet, please, this damned request

Longing is the sauce of all unhappiness

I long for an antedote to your ungarnished bliss

 

Continue reading

Dutch, Swiss, and German, Katie Vogel has lived and worked in Shanghai for almost two years. She is a Bachata lover, fall leaf cruncher, yogi, and poet. With a B.A. in Creative Writing, her work has appeared in Parnassus, Visions, and ASPZ.

 

Farewell

 

I leave you softly

a heron listening

 

water cresting

bony sure knees

home grounding the heart

in morning solace

 

two feet never rise at once

one lingers on earth’s wet marrow

like the last friend swinging

coolly on a porch rocking chair

comfortable

 

the scene changes

something is not quite right

 

a bent cattail discolored

the kingfisher’s calculated dive

absent

 

new swallows nest and caw

the heron preens again

scratching the unscratchable

feeling

 

though all is right

perfect even

the sky is also home

and wings cannot wait for winter

 

 

~

 

Repatriation 

 

There is something in silence

which shakes down trees

 

once planted on dusty lanes

hedged with scooters and noise

 

and people and life unfurling

the same velocity

 

waterfalls don’t know themselves

too heavy with breathing

 

rushing falling breaking and rebirthing

dispersing in every direction

 

absorbed in sky sun skin of the earth

and any human within five miles

 

sound rattles out of a cage

never built.

 

My city is far, far away.

 

I lay on the grass. If you zoom out,

you would see squares of earth –

 

sectioned portions you could fork and

eat in one bland bite.

 

Grass cool, I listen with all my skin:

voices from another time

 

race along each blade

 

tickling my cheek,

familiar,

packed with life.

 

Continue reading

Jonathan Chan is a writer, editor, and graduate of the University of Cambridge. Born in New York to a Malaysian father and South Korean mother, he was raised in Singapore, where he is presently based. He is interested in questions of faith, identity, and creative expression. He has recently been moved by the writing of Tse Hao Guang, Rodrigo Dela Peña Jr., and Balli Kaur Jaswal.

watching

 

waiting at the bus stop, two pull

up, departing in different roads. patrons

alight, soles on tarmac, late afternoon

hues of white or blue or green. hands

graze skin, children tugged along, screens

pocketed. the flurry weaves around my

bench, chatter blending into revved

 

engines. shorts and shoes move toward

the trail, cloistered between tracks and

concrete. eyes flash for a peacock or

chocolate pansy, those brilliant bursts

of orange, or the eerie dash of white,

emigrants drifting in the evening

breeze. midday flutters away, my

seat grows cold, and i dream of an

inch of another’s peace.

 

~

 

idiomatic

 

a small, needful brightness

worked his way through the

consonance of sunlight and

wind, at times unhurried, at

 

others with a turbulence like

red ants. once he faced a

cleaved road, elsewhere he

followed a stream back to

 

its spring. he sits in the shade

of old stories, however

atavistic, crawling with the

guilt of maternal likeness:

 

the silhouette of a bow,

curved as a snake, the ringing

of a bronze bell, hands cupped

over his ears, the sharpened

 

axe, clean through timber.

scrawled in dark ink, my teeth

begin to chatter, lips curved in

lashing strokes of red.

 

~

 

a likeness of flowers

after Wong Kar-wai

 

the past is something he

could see, but not touch:

 

years fading as if

glass had been pulverised

 

to grey ash, soot accumulating,

visible beyond grasp,

 

everything blurred and

indistinct. he yearns for all that

 

had left– if he could break

through that pile of

 

ash, return before the days began

to vanish, thumbs pressed,

 

anguish whispered, buried with

mud in the groove of a tree.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

awakening

after Craig Arnold

 

to wake in the presence of

daylight, swollen eyes before

 

congealed lustre, sluggishly

unfurling between sorrow and

 

possibility. to live in the glory

of softness, before the deadened

 

grip of the day’s agitations, the

fumbling for a pressure valve,

 

a fire escape. to breathe in the nodes

of mirth, or are they a kneading

 

heaviness, the dull puncture of

flayed language? to see in the absence

 

of sequence, knife scraped against

serrated surface, the drum and rustle of

 

text and headline. to lean into opening

air, that sonorous exhalation,

 

particulate in a burnished dance. to

wake into rippling sunlight, diverting

 

the gaze, so tired from the gleam of

blue, to that beloved flash, that

 

effortless flicker. to wake in

the presence of daylight.

 

Continue reading