Poetry

SHELLY BRYANT divides her year between Shanghai and Singapore, working as a poet, writer, and translator. She is the author of eight volumes of poetry (Alban Lake and Math Paper Press), a pair of travel guides for the cities of Suzhou and Shanghai (Urbanatomy), and a book on classical Chinese gardens (Hong Kong University Press). She has translated work from the Chinese for Penguin Books, Epigram Publishing, the National Library Board in Singapore, Giramondo Books, and Rinchen Books. Shelly’s poetry has appeared in journals, magazines, and websites around the world, as well as in several art exhibitions. Her translation of Sheng Keyi’s Northern Girls was long-listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2012, and her translation of You Jin’s In Time, Out of Place was shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize in 2016.  You can visit her website at shellybryant.com.

Guerrilla

in my defense

ditches dug, mounds erected

smooth surfaces made rough

safety measures

preventing passage of hostiles

the scarred face of home

my safeguard

against invasion

~

7 March 3529

Kepler K20 mission arrives

at HAT-P-11b

then looks back, homeward

on Earth the descendants

of those whose jaws dropped

at the K20’s images

of the titan Saturn

note in despair

even Sol is not the lucida

in the probe’s newfound constellation

~

Images 2014

a stellar year

images

the Berlin Wall falling

finally

arriving

at Altair’s orbiting wards

while Attila the Hun

ravaging Rome and

Muhammed fleeing Mecca

descend

on Dereb’s planetary plane

lightyears crossed

distant eyes espy

movements of Earth’s people

long deceased

the same day Hubble descries

a star’s death throes

its exploding ecstasy

~

In the Reading Room at the Science Academy

The astronomy journal knows its audience. On the stodgy-looking cover, Luke Skywalker’s name and home planet in large, bold print. I turn to page 03-114, an article about recently-sighted circumstellar and circumbinary planets. I read: as of late 2014, all the circumbinary planets so far sighted are gas giants; none have rocky surfaces. 

I memorize the name Kepler 16B, the first transiting circumbinary planet seen by Earth eyes. Perfect for the planet in my short story. I wonder if anyone will pick up on the poetic license – my Kepler 16B will be inhabited, not a huge gasball orbiting its two suns.

Exoplanets in orbit around a single star in a binary system, the two stars orbiting each other once every century or so. I wonder whether Tatooine was meant to be circumstellar or circumbinary. Not well-versed in Star Wars lore beyond the films, I cannot answer the circumbinary-or-circumstellar question. I make a guess. Tatooine: transiting circumbinary planet (but not a gas giant). At least, this fits the sunset in that iconic scene.

The long hand draws near the 5 on the clock’s face. An afternoon, whiled away pondering the path of a planet that does not exist. “Never his mind on where he was, what he was doing.” Owning the chide, I pack up and leave the Reading Room. Outside, the blaze of my single sun nears the horizon.

evening commuters

under a plane tree canopy

– standstill traffic
~

bound by metaphors

provided by my race

I think of his magnetism

as that which draws me

not noting its other

equally strong impulse

SHELLY BRYANT divides her year between Shanghai and Singapore, working as a poet, writer, and translator. She is the author of eight volumes of poetry (Alban Lake and Math Paper Press), a pair of travel guides for the cities of Suzhou and Shanghai (Urbanatomy), and a book on classical Chinese gardens (Hong Kong University Press). She has translated work from the Chinese for Penguin Books, Epigram Publishing, the National Library Board in Singapore, Giramondo Books, and Rinchen Books. Shelly’s poetry has appeared in journals, magazines, and websites around the world, as well as in several art exhibitions. Her translation of Sheng Keyi’s Northern Girls was long-listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2012, and her translation of You Jin’s In Time, Out of Place was shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize in 2016.  You can visit her website at shellybryant.com.

Kowtow

forehead

awaiting still the appearance
of a qiagban to mark my piety
my thoughts turn to you
– a beginning of my devotions

throat

breath sucked along the passage
blocked, the words that wish to fly
on a heavenward trajectory, me to you
– the suppression of mine for yours

heart

point from which all else flows
thought and speech mustering
as if for a final stand
before at last dropping to our knees

prostration

knees, palms, breast, face
all laid out on the earth
a single string vibrating
within the chthonic chord

~

Special Administrative District

names   changing
changing       hands
Khitan        Liao          Manchu
Rehe         Jehol
Japan
a buffer zone             shredded
absorbed by a neighborly trio
no trace left
on the maps we know
today

~

Not Your Business

it’s not your business, she said
when I commented on the pair
lounging nearby in the teahouse

then turned to the dragonfly
just settling in the flowerbed
with her lens, six inches long

~

Bonsai

tiny trees in robust bloom
azaleas’ varicolored blaze

yesterday
their prismatic symphony
had yet to sound

a short-lived song
silenced again
two days later

their voices
as I spoke of the hues
echoed in the setting sun
reflected in your eyes

~

a pine stands by the plum tree
at the pond’s edge
white blooms, a celebration of the snow
releasing its hold on the earth
laid over the prickly scene
of a more constant verdure

~

Fu Xi Temple

Brought here by fortune’s turn, hearing the whisper in ancient branches, I feel no regrets.
“How old is that cypress?”
“That one? It’s young. Four, maybe five hundred years. This one over here, though, it’s 1,300 years old. Give or take.”

engraved dragon
encircling a phoenix –
the twist of his blade

~

Horology

sundial
measured, moments
the movements of timepieces
on high; Earth’s flow
around her sun

hourglass

a running stream dammed
time, pooling at the neck
insisting on its trajectory
with each falling grain

clock

walking on its hands
we pace ourselves
its cadence prescribing
the flow of our days

timeline

life’s events marked
birth graduation marriage death
life’s days passed
in the spaces in between