Poetry

Holly Painter – five poems

August 4, 2017

Holly Painter is a poet, writer, and editor from southeast Michigan. Her first book of poetry, Excerpts from a Natural History, was published by Titus Books in Auckland, New Zealand in 2015. Her poetry, fiction, and essays have also been published in literary journals and anthologies in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore. Holly teaches writing and literature at the University of Vermont.

The Strait

There is no street where I live

The leaves of the houseplants rattle

A town of scorched earth and fire escapes,

the city beside the strait

Only the inner layers pasted over remain

Today is not a shade of anything

a city grown weary of rebirth

of the scent of raspberries and wood

The place that made your cars

will open itself to you tonight

on land that cannot be new

as the hush or the day or

the air blowing between rotting boards

that gird the soggier organs

the scaffolding of a rust empire

with wild dogs for sentries

~

Eight

Mammatus clouds hover over telephone lines,

fingertips poised to pluck the strings of a guitar.

Neil hangs upside-down from the tire swing

jabbing at roly-polies until his stick snaps.

He dismounts with a neat somersault and

brushes the woodchips from his ecto green windbreaker.

Next year, his parents will split. He’ll move with his mom

to the neighborhood where all the wild boys live.

I climb the slide, boots slip-squeaking,

and thump up to a landing caked with wet-pulped leaves.

He’ll take pills in high school and get suspended for fighting

while I rack up scholarships and slice myself with broken lightbulbs.

I scout the woods where we’re not allowed to go.

It’s almost dark and there are no birds.

A flashing needle strings white light across the sky

and then fades as a crash rends the day,

a smoker clearing his throat

before spitting out a thunderstorm,

and we run.

~

Beside the Church

Rain between the digging

and the burying meant

summer afternoons of

muddy swimming holes

We leapt from earthmovers

shrieking as we plunged underground,

ballooned our breath in our cheeks,

and spit out dirty bubbles

We sliced a worm with a spade

and the dead fell out

but we were small gods:

we’d made another worm

We sprawled in new grass

thin tufts in the dirt

looked straight up the rain

to the black

and imagined

dirt coming down

~

Feed Me

Feed me only what is necessary

What is tender might be necessary

Feed me the train like a chain of clay beads

encircling the lady’s green wrist

its boxcars brown as a burlap sack

caked with the mud of potatoes

Feed me the red you suck off a candy cane

leaving a stabbing white icicle

Then feed me the icicle

the seasonal stalactite

that drips itself to life and death

Melt it for me with your breath

Feed me your grab bag face:

your punched in nose and your

beautiful eyes that can only be

the churning surf you kept

Feed my teenage demand

that you be everything:

breakfast, lunch, and dinner

morning, noon, and night

Feed me only what is necessary

and all you are is necessary

I’d feed you too, I would,

but I can never be just another

warm-blooded host

that’s not paying attention

~

Apologetics of a College Freshman

To the termites of the last empire:

Sorry, but we chew our own cities now

inflate them in the mornings

sour apple bubblegum

and swallow them at night

not the other way around

To the tobacconists of the old century:

Sorry, but we roll our own now

stash Mom and Dad in the Christmas cupboard

and take them out to wrap around boxes

crease their edges and trim the excess

while Mom’s still flatly nattering away

To the factory farmers of yesteryear:

Sorry, but we grow our own now

sprinkle the seeds of children in classroom

plumbing – they sprout from the walls

absorb their math and science and then

we pluck them and send them to college in vases

To the bankers of ages past:

Sorry, but we save our own now

drop kisses in jam jars with buttons

and cursing coins and wishes and

every extra Sunday we save till the

end of our days and then spend

To the gods of a time gone by:

Sorry, but we are our own now

fathers, mothers, devils, angels

prophets, priests, chosen people

and if we seem a touch surreal

well, let’s be honest, so were you

Poetry

John Mulrooney – three poems

July 31, 2017

John Mulrooney is a poet, filmmaker and musician living in Cambridge, MA. He is author of If You See Something, Say Something from the Anchorite Press and co-producer of the documentary ‘The Peacemaker’, from Central Square Films. He records and performs regularly with a number of groups in the greater Boston area. He is Associate Professor in the English Department at Bridgewater State University. His work has appeared in Fulcrum, Pressed Wafer fold’em zine, Solstice, The Battersea Review, Poetry Northeast, Spoke, Let the Bucket Down and others.

At the Brooklyn Promenade

Blue clouds of the dusk sky

shimmer on the surface of the harbor;

placemats of blue lace on a bluer table,

and then shift back to something more

cloudlike; something less, being only

the things that they are, and reflections at that.

And what of it. All day

sorting a crate of our recent past

which cannot go away

fast enough, dividing stacks

of almost identical diagnosis attempts,

a hundred pages of the unsaid,

layered blue of MRI prints –

a series of study sketches

toward an unfinished work.

This park is the triumph of making,

a template for Sunday afternoons

where I had guided her slowly,

so careful as to be clumsy,

along the promenade to sit

on a bench under Brooklyn Bridge,

its vast arc the manifest perfected

sum of some quantifiable knowledge,

because it was something she could do,

just to get out for a while.

Today, a man photographs

the cobbles along the walkway

littered with cellophane and

pink strands from a feather boa,

a newspaper soggy with urine,

its letters running like mascara;

these are all this day alone,

against the irreducible sky

and the splendor of structure;

what the wind has done

to make this day particular.

And these shapes changing

on the water like like or as

are not even, cannot be what I sing

because memory is death; it kills the things

you cherish or dread and replaces

each one with your memory of it:

a hollowness built of the real.

And suddenly it was almost me who

could not walk to a bench by the bridge,

although it never was,

although my arms and legs

obey my commands,

do what I tell them but never what I want:

wrong and helpless,

I span one to the other

because all I can do is identify

make myself metaphor,

a thing that might look like,

that you think is but isn’t.

And I want to dive,

that marriage of plummet and jump,

in below the refracted sky,

to the water’s silence

and come out on the surface

that might make me one of

these changing things I cannot change,

which will erase my clumsiness

and redraw me as shimmer.

~

Autumn Walk After Jodorowsky

More métier en scene

than inchoate vagabond

some summer in the knees

some summer in green

and of course in the water

were protean secrets,

the day and clock pulse

still too small to retain

an atmosphere true but

in the forge of gravity

The Empress of autumn

sought the star, summer

plunged below and yellow

irises found hiding spots

and our eyes seeking them

confirmed that we all sought

the commensal beauty

and usefulness therein –

big fish and little fish

bandicoot and boa –

blood is protein knowledge

on autumn’s whistle stop

or winter’s all aboard,

but summer yes she bleeds –

rats and racoons wreak

havoc around her feet

cluttered under composts

of spring that winter nicked.

~

Poem on Madonna’s 50^th Birthday

here is August soaked with reminder

that the world is material that changes

there’s a flag at half mast

for someone who didn’t even make the papers

the rainy season comes upon us

like it was the tropics like the

flutters and hums on Bleeker

were south beach waves and breezes

the flutters and hums on Bleeker

that becomes a material that changes

Paparazzi armies lay siege to the ineffable

dumpy men made of rain

make glimmer solid in a flashbulb

and Elvis Presley 31 years dead

waits with us to reinsert mystery

into the material substance of our lives

says with us we ache we ache we ache

comes to love us

as we come to love ourselves

by waiting upon those

we desire to both want and be

until memory strikes a pose

and crosses over the borderline

of our love.

Poetry, Translation

Scott L. Satterfield – translation of ‘鹿柴’ by Wang Wei

July 24, 2017

Deer Fall

Empty mountains – no one seen

yet echoing voices are heard

Setting sunlight enters deep forest

again lighting the moss green

Wang Wei

鹿柴

空山不见人

但闻人语響

返景入深林

复照青苔上

王維

Poetry

安琪 – 《某某家阳台》

July 17, 2017

(A translation of this piece into English by Tse Hao Guang can be found here.)

安琪 (1969-)，女，本名黄江嫔，1969年2月出生，福建漳州人。1988年7月漳州师范学院中文系毕业。中间代概念首倡者及代表诗人。第三条道路诗歌流派代表诗人。

诗作入选《中间代诗全集》《现代中国文学精品文库·诗歌卷》《感动大学生的100首诗歌》《新世纪十佳青年女诗人诗选》及各种年度诗歌选本等，主编有《中间代诗全集》（与远村、黄礼孩合作，海峡文艺出版社2004年出版）等。出版有诗集《奔跑的栅栏》《任性》《像杜拉斯一样生活》《个人记忆：2004——2006》等五种。诗作被译成韩文、希伯来文、英文，入选韩国、以色列、美国等诗歌选本。现居北京。

我喜欢某
某某
某某某
我用它们代替我喜欢的某，某某，某某某
某+某某=某某某
某某某就是你
你在你家阳台望出去
望见春秋战国时代走来的一个人
一个女人
她在你家阳台望出去
望见春秋战国时代走来的一个人
一个男人
他们互相望了望，互相笑了笑，就走到了
秦朝、汉朝
和唐朝

Poetry, Translation

Tse Hao Guang – a translation of An Qi’s ‘So & So’s Terrace’

July 14, 2017

Tse Hao Guang 謝皓光 is the author of Deeds of Light (Math Paper Press), shortlisted for the 2016 Singapore Literature Prize. He co-edits the cross-genre, collaborative e-journal OF ZOOS, and is a 2016 fellow of the International Writing Program.

So & So’s Terrace

Poetry

Annie Christain – two poems

July 10, 2017

Annie Christain is an assistant professor of composition and ESOL at SUNY Cobleskill with poems appearing in Seneca Review, Oxford Poetry, The Chariton Review, and The Lifted Brow, among others. She received the grand prize of the 2013 Hart Crane Memorial Poetry Contest, the 2013 Greg Grummer Poetry Award, the 2015 Oakland School of the Arts Enizagam Poetry Award, and the 2015 Neil Shepard Prize in Poetry. Additional honors include her being selected for the Shanghai Swatch Art Peace Hotel Artist Residency and the Arctic Circle Autumn Art and Science Expedition Residency.

The Sect Which Pulls the Sinews: I’ve Seen You Handle Cocoons*

“[A man] shall not lie with another man as [he would] with a woman, it is a to’eva.”

(Leviticus 18:22)

Silkworm dung lines my gums for tea;

I clutch menorah for paddle.

Malka, give me mother-strength

to save the scrolls.

I could never lie with Yôhanan

as I lie with women—

our chewing mouthparts,

our tongues just wringed fiber.

My holy sparks dwell in him.

The first time I touched a boy,

I glimpsed pomegranate arils in the bowl

and felt beetles walk across my chest.

When I crushed them,

a monstrous insect leg broke

forth from my midsection,

ready to strike me at any time—

how I discovered my nature.

With faith, I could have spat into my hand,

clapped, and scored myself with a knife.

Instead, I, the most Chinese of the Chinese Jews,

love Silk Maker Yôhanan,

who sees me as a dybbuk.

It’s true I carve questions onto the bones

of a rooster during Passover

and leave my doorpost bare.

You bring the smell of juniper and ammonia,

he hissed at my belly while breaking his tools.

I burned this foreign body once to please him,

but new and stranger shoots emerged.

I imagine placing his hand there.

There is no Malka,

Just a mother who carved Shalom

onto my infant chest

before drowning herself.

Carry me away, Yôhanan,

if I wind myself up in the floating Torah;

the sign on my hand is twisted bark,

fringe, spooned over pulp.

I’ve seen you handle cocoons.

* First published in ICON

~

We Must Kill All Rats Before We Can Kill Your Rats*

When I’m up late mixing concrete, the little children who live inside the walls scratch out phoenix designs. I talk to myself to drown out their chants of white devil,

and never once do I mention the Revolution—only how the leaders put an end to starvation.

I explained all my problems to the apartment manager, but he just said: We must kill all rats before we can kill your rats. It’s true because the police only wiped out the local cat population after they had reached a tipping point.

To talk of starvation—my mom stopped feeding me when I was five because she was too busy sleeping with men to get free rations of chocolates and cigarettes. No wonder I ask the gods for more and more offspring—

no one pays attention to just one emaciated child.

Soon I was allowed to plug up all the rat holes in my apartment if I paid for the cement myself. Word of my strong character spread to all the parents on the block with left-over women daughters. Every mother I meet bows and gives me soft chicken bones and eggs preserved in ash and salt. I only take them because it means less food for her.

The guards told me with pride that they help all the sick mothers on my block. Just in case it’s true, I place bananas at the feet of Shiva gutting a mermaid-whore so I can convince the gods to make more mothers suffer alone.

I spend my time renovating my apartment, teaching English, shooting roosters bound to blocks of ice, or volunteering to improve society. Just yesterday Onion’s parents gave her gold earrings and pushed her into the closet where I was waiting to finally give them a grandson. I paid for those earrings myself.

Her male ancestors stood on a cloud and cheered me on with their demands for a male heir. I told her what I tell all the girls: I want to investigate your faith.

Many of these so-called cherished mothers here sleep stacked in silos that once stored rice. I shook their hands while the director of the senior center snapped some photos. The newspaper article said I was a doctor from a local medical university doing routine check-ups.

Western man monitors health of Bao Ming . . . .

Her kind won’t be safe anywhere in this world.

* First published in Skidrow Penthouse

Thanks to CR Press

Literary Nonfiction, Poetry

Miho Kinnas – two pieces

June 26, 2017

Miho Kinnas was re-transplanted from Shanghai to Carolina. Her poetry collection Today Fish Only was published by Math Paper Press in 2015, and her work also appears in The Classical Gardens of Shanghai (HKU Press 2016) and Quixoteca: Poems East of La Mancha (Chameleon Press 2016). Her translations have been published in Star*Line (2015) and Cha (2017)

Haruki Murakami

I buy his new book, Killing Commendatore, and get on the bus. It’s written in his usual style but sentences seem slightly longer. Does he use more layered adjectives? Or there are more parallel nouns.

The bus I am on turns left. It should have been the right turn. The machine voice names an unfamiliar stop. I’ve been on this route since childhood. The bus passes a grey complex. It skips a hospital with two ambulances parked outside. The sign on the street corner reads The Town of Boat in the Bay. I have heard the name before. Like a cat watching an intruder, I was ready to jump off any minute.

Oh, I know. Murakami uses more metaphors than before. Rather elaborate metaphors. I did check the destination when I got on the bus. I wonder whether a wife goes missing as she normally is in the books he writes. The voice says the next bus stop will be my usual stop.

~

He Who Loves Bullet Trains

If sadness has a shape, it’d be uneven.

Shin Godzilla steps, steps on houses, houses, houses.

Spatial memory builds along the track.

A missing piece is replaced. But.

If dream draws a line, it’d be disconnected.

Things don’t go as planned. Therefore.

A little fugue will ring at the next stop.

Shin・kan ・sen

It’s too fast; my heart is still at Tokyo Station.

Poetry

Nina Powles – two poems

June 23, 2017

Nina Powles is a writer and poet from New Zealand, currently living in Shanghai. She is the author of the chapbook Girls of the Drift (Seraph Press, 2014) and several poetry zines. She blogs at Dumpling Queen and is the creator of Tiny Moons.

The city of forbidden shrines

I was almost born in the lunar month of padded clothing

in the solar term of almost summer

in the season of ringing cicadas

in the city of forbidden shrines

almost spent a girlhood watching sandstorms

tearing through the almost golden sunlight

I almost scraped dust off my knees each day for fifteen years

almost painted paper tigers each year to burn

I could almost hold all the meanings of 家 in my mouth

without swallowing: [home, family, domestic

a measure word for every almost-place I’ve ever been]

like the swimming pool turning almost blue

or the mausoleum of almost ten thousand oranges

in the land of almost I would never breathe an ocean

never hold mountains in my arms

except in almost-dreams

in which long white clouds drift

almost close enough to touch

~

Forest City

They say they will build a forest city so that one day our lungs will know what it means to breathe. We won’t notice at first, just a windfall of flower stamens floating down around us one Wednesday afternoon. Then moss spreading through cracks in the pavement and vines curling around streetlights. Blossom trees leaning over balconies, reaching across inner-city highways. Yellow chrysanthemums floating inside water coolers, trees dropping ripe plums all over pedestrian crossings, painting them red. Ivy crawling down through the grates into the subway where I will climb over foxgloves and flowering aloes to get onto the train. We will carry umbrellas to protect ourselves from falling apricots. The street corner where we first met will become a sea of violets. The alleyway where we kissed will be submerged in a field of sunflowers all turning their heads towards us. The planes we saw flying overhead when we opened our eyes while kissing will be obscured by a canopy of giant ferns, the sound of their engines drowned out by leaves whispering. We will be unable to find the steps to your apartment among the plane trees. We will touch each other’s faces and realise our irises have changed colour due to the reflections of hydrangeas. We will retrace our steps to find our way home and when we cannot walk anymore we will lay our bodies down on the forest floor, skin against moss, lips touching the blooms, eyes open in the dark, imagining stars.

Poetry, Translation

Xu Zhimo – ‘Listening to a Wagner Opera’ (translated by Shelly Bryant)

June 19, 2017

The translation of this poem was originally commissioned by Lynn Pan for use in her research for her most recent book When True Love Came to China. She has generously allowed us to reprint the work at Alluvium. When True Love Came to China can be found at Amazon.

Listening to a Wagner Opera

by Xu Zhimo

powers divine or demonic

bring forth thunderous

sounds, a raw howl

like waves on the wild deep;

hellish fires’ rumbles

thrill, like a leonine roar

commanding the seas to split

the skies rent ‘twixt stars and sun;

a sudden silence; only soft

sounds of pine forest

its gentle birdcall before

the cabin’s fluttering curtains;

silence, a portent overshadowing

a barren snowy landscape

o’erflown by a solitary bird

singing its sorrowful song;

in sorrowful song, the reed

flute’s secret seduction

like hoofbeats on a frozen

arid land, armor’s beating rhythm;

beating rhythm, a flood of sound

booming, crashing, banging

to signal a new epoch, the tune

of hoofs pounding and blood flowing;

it is Prometheus, the theft

and the rebellion, chained

to his mountain peak, each meal

dug out from his breast;

it is romance, sorrowful and tragic

it is love, devoted and loyal

all-consuming, universal and miraculous

all-surpassing love;

the artist’s inspiration

the genius of heaven

beyond all powers of explanation

lasting beyond human bonds;

a brewing gloom’s complaint

a raging holy love

a tragic compassion’s spirit

– the genius of the arts.

brilliant, furious, fervent, tragic

out of the forge of love

the artistic impulse draws

the peerless opera of Wagner

• Published in March 10, 1923 “Current News · Learning Light” Volume 5.3.8

† translated by Shelly Bryant, October 2013

听槐格讷(Wagner)乐剧

– 徐志摩

是神权还是魔力，
搓揉着雷霆霹雳，
暴风、广漠的怒号，
绝海里骇浪惊涛；
地心的火窖咆哮，
回荡，狮虎似狂嗥，
仿佛是海裂天崩，
星陨日烂的朕兆；
忽然静了；只剩有
松林附近，乌云里
漏下的微嘘，拂扭
村前的酒帘青旗；
可怖的伟大凄静
万壑层岩的雪景，
偶尔有冻鸟横空
摇曳零落的悲鸣；
悲鸣，胡笳的幽引，
雾结冰封的无垠，
隐隐有马蹄铁甲
篷帐悉索的荒音；
荒音，洪变的先声，
鼍鼓金钲荡怒，
霎时间万马奔腾，
酣斗里血流虎虎；
是泼牢米修仡司
通译普罗米修斯，
的反叛，抗天拯人
的奋斗，高加山前
挚鹰刳胸的创呻；
是恋情，悲情，惨情，
是欢心，苦心，赤心；
是弥漫，普遍，神幻，
消金灭圣的性爱；
是艺术家的幽骚，
是天壤间的烦恼，
是人类千年万年
郁积未吐的无聊；
这沉郁酝酿的牢骚，
这猖獗圣洁的恋爱，
这悲天悯人的精神，
贯透了艺术的天才。
性灵，愤怒，慷慨，悲哀，
管弦运化，金革调合，
创制了无双的乐剧，
革音革心的槐格讷！

五月二十五日■原载1923年3月10日《时事新报·学灯》第5卷3册8号。

Poetry

Karolina Pawlik – from the ‘Migraintion’ series

June 12, 2017

Karolina Pawlik is a Shanghai-based researcher, lecturer and writer of mixed Polish and Russian origins. Trained in anthropology, she is mostly interested in visual culture, especially typography evolving in Shanghai since the Republican era. Some of her poems in Polish have been published in Poland. “Migraintion” is the first poetry series she has written in English.

*

my roots grow secretly
into a path
for lonely wanderers

*

the boundary evolved
and hope
is the only way in

*
an exercise in trust and patience
Lent
in the entry-exit office

*
word embolism
I learn to live
on moonless nights

*
haiku half-dreamed
Wet Monday morning
downpour on my old roof

*
less light
is more renewal
moon lesson at the crossroads

*
the only clarity
is of this night
received with gratitude

The Strait

~

Eight

~

Beside the Church

~

Feed Me

~

Apologetics of a College Freshman

Related posts

At the Brooklyn Promenade

~

Autumn Walk After Jodorowsky

~

Poem on Madonna’s 50th Birthday

Related posts

Deer Fall

鹿柴

Related posts

Related posts

So & So’s Terrace

Related posts

The Sect Which Pulls the Sinews: I’ve Seen You Handle Cocoons*

* First published in ICON

~

We Must Kill All Rats Before We Can Kill Your Rats*

* First published in Skidrow Penthouse

Related posts

Haruki Murakami

~

He Who Loves Bullet Trains

Related posts

The city of forbidden shrines

Forest City

Listening to a Wagner Opera

• Published in March 10, 1923 “Current News · Learning Light” Volume 5.3.8

† translated by Shelly Bryant, October 2013

听槐格讷(Wagner)乐剧

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Poetry Prose Literary Translation

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