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Poetry

Poetry

冼文光 – 三首诗

June 18, 2018

作者简介: 马来西亚籍/曾获台湾联合报新诗大奖/著有诗集《以光为食》《黑光/白影》，

小说《情敌》《苍蝇》《马云们》等/目前从事广告创意、写作与词曲创作

 

Wonderwall     

– Oasis

 

误入一个游乐场

乘过山车到云端―――

勿回望过去的愤怒。

我没有告诉你

昨夜梦见你

 

梦里没有谁被打湿

雨缝间行走

寻找一个被告之的绿洲；

穿过峡谷、英国乡镇；

跟随一个马队、一伙阿拉伯商旅

 

睡于狭窄的蓬包

外面燃着诡异的火把

清晨时自动熄灭：

这非比寻常

明天或将有暴雨？

 

迷墙下牵牛花下

我们是我们

他们是他们；

然而你们

已非昔时那两个

 

~

 

Counting Blue Cars            

-Dishwalla

 

马路中央，那些事件的中心

恶灵跟圣徒交战；啊再一次

于我心上演。恶狗在吠

年底的雨雨丝绵绵落到海底。

别让长辈空等，时日无多；

他们已没有什么可以给与。

会馆：除了一排死人的照片、

一片坚厚的霉味、

黑色白色的“拓荒史”之外

有的只是菩萨虹色的幻影。

排排坐吃果果听长辈讲故事：

很久很久以前―――

有一队马车

从大陆开往半岛

从半岛驶入地狱

 

~

 

1979               

-Smashing Pumpkins

 

开窗，放光

放满天的星光进入

当我还是孩子

举臂踮足

墙上作记号

跟竹竿比高

末日的丧钟

滴血的胡姬

披翼的子弹

昼伏夜出―――

那年我九岁：

 

窗外有鬼。

那不是我―――

但愿那个即是我

写信读信回信

盼送信的带给我

星型的包裹

窗外有鬼

无人相信

我继续追

追上一艘飞船：

那年我九岁！

 

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Poetry

Renga in the Plum Garden

May 21, 2018

One of the pillars of traditional Japanese poetry, the renga consists of verses alternating between a haiku and a couplet. In gatherings of poets, the renga was often employed as a form of play, with each poet adding one verse to the chain that ultimately formed the complete renga.

 

On 12 May 2018, Literary Shanghai hosted an event called “Renga in the Plum Garden” in Lu Xun Park, Shanghai. As the spring afternoon flowed by, while sipping tea and saké, participants formed a renga chain, with each poet adding her or his observations of the scene in turn. With the permission of the poets involved, we reproduce here the renga that took shape that afternoon.

                       – Susie Gordon, Alluvium editor

 

 

lazy saxophone

competing voice asking why

flowers are so red

~ SB

 

palm leaves like small fans vibrate

voices make the ash trees sing

~ LJ

 

breast’s curve

beneath the mist, jade dress

the rain begins

~ KP

 

the leaves cry in the still air

the novice hearts pound for sake

~ CDL

 

red ceramic stains

sweet redwood softly cracks

leaves and grain fill cups

~ NW

 

foliage peacocks across the bridge I sit

we both flirt with the wind

~ CR

 

chirping canopy

rumbles under quiet feet

the sun gleaming through

~ AR

 

paddle boat on man-made stream

rippled laughter, childish glee

~ SB

 

a pattern of squares

red pillows on round stone beds

witness to the game

~ LJ

 

saxo-phone’s wires

connecting accidental strangers

~ KP

 

purpose of the park

abrupt electric humor

Allegra misspoke

~ CDL

 

sit, listen, argue, stroll slow

remember great names of the past

~ NW

 

;ateness’ raucous intro

to sinuous humid lines

dead on arrival

~ AFB

 

as rains for this rich forest

poets are always timely

~ CR

 

May 4th, May 12th

Lu Xun still listening

bending bamboos along the mossy path

~ KP

 

secrets sprouting between us

listening ears still abound

~ AR

 

silence betwixt wood columns

ears gently inclined

catching gaps

~ AFB

 

whispers yells, spring squawks and squeaks

silence listens here and now

~ NW

 

a smoking woodwind

radios on wet pavement

the silence disturbs

~ CDL

 

foreign faces on the bridge

noticed – they’re not one of us

~ SB

 

technology intrudes

amongst the fountain pens

an orange flash in green

~ LJ

 

we capture the intrigue

imitate natures colors

try to co-exist

~ CR

 

 

Names of the poets, in alphabetical order:

AFB                Allegra Fonda-Bonardi

AR                  Allison Rose

CDL                Chris DeLacy

CR                   Chanell Ruth

KP                   Karolina Pawlik

LJ                    Linda Johnson

NW                 Noah Willingham

SB                   Shelly Bryant

 

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Poetry

Johanna Costigan – three poems

May 14, 2018

Johanna M. Costigan is a writer from New York who lives in Shanghai, China.

 

Baby Diplomacy

No wonder the jails don’t fill. English was offered as enrichment; some people are their own identifiers. Stop reprimanding her for painting the subway or claiming the abandoned money. She was just doing the bare minimum under improvised provinces; promises stepping over city lines. Europe, the paper weight, overshared.

I built a pool between the rich and one digit. Or? And? Shut up the conjunctions. They wrote through thunder. No one corrected counterparts: bilingual beings, who were they to decipher foreign dictionaries–dignitaries mostly just wait in line anyway: don’t they?

 

~

 

Foreign Clients

I couldn’t tell if it was a tick or a freckle. Either might itch. The traditional kind of baby advertises itself. I took a bath underground, listening to the city stomp. Clean–but still itchy–I chose the stairs.

So many people turn to inanimate objects. Over the elevator’s panting, complaints bounced off metal walls, a synesthetic rainbow of ringtones. They answer but insist–in perfect Mandarin–on English.

 

~

 

Not Necessarily

Your sidewalk tomb fire was happening tomorrow, but I never left the last night

like the juice no one brings up, the huge cities we don’t talk about

the birth, about the death, about the difference between health and medical, whoever labeled you able bodied wasn’t wrong.

Sitting still? The next article you read will say it’s the cure forward,

you chew with a hard silk tooth, the taste of blood

between meals and the headache when

you picture rat heart moving.

Citizen journalists admit that there is not just one system swimming

taxing before it thinks

we investigate: hot on the bus, trees planted late,

that afternoon you spent overlapping in bed.

You were quiet when it rained. Our eyes sat on you. Everyone didn’t explain.

When the other birds died we didn’t have to ask why. 

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Johanna Costigan – three poems
December 8, 2017
Johanna Costigan – four poems
November 17, 2017
Poetry

Shelly Bryant – two poems from “Peregrinations”

May 7, 2018
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.
Shanghai International Studies University (1)
2018 April 9, Shanghai
we sit in the sunlit garden
a few moments between obligations
to share a simple lunch
placing the plastic spoon
into the empty yogurt cup
you reach up
and sweep a leaf from my hair
then you ask
how I might translate
another old, worn cliché
~
Shanghai International Studies University (2)
2018 April 14, Shanghai
settled into my favorite corner
huddled over a project
translating a text on a familiar topic
I grow suddenly uncomfortable
the author’s explanation unfolding
in my own language
          from my own pen
telling why one must never
allow his slave to wash a vase
it being, after all,
worth more than she
if it breaks, the cost
will not be recouped
even after she is sold
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Related posts
Shelly Bryant – Two Poems
November 18, 2019
Wu Mu (Teo Sum Lim) – 新加坡组曲 (translated as ‘Singapore Suite’ by Shelly Bryant)
December 11, 2017
Dan Ying – 梳起不嫁 (translated as “Combing Up, Never to Marry” by Shelly Bryant)
December 4, 2017
Poetry

Rita Mookerjee – “Lost Girl, Taipei”

April 30, 2018

Rita Mookerjee’s poetry is featured or forthcoming in Lavender Review, Sorority Mansion Review, and Spider Mirror Journal. Her critical work has been featured in the Routledge Companion of Literature and Food, the Bloomsbury Handbook to Literary and Cultural Theory, and the Bloomsbury Handbook of Twenty-First Century Feminist Theory. She currently teaches ethnic minority fiction and women’s literature at Florida State University where she is a PhD candidate specialising in contemporary Caribbean literature with a focus on queer theory. Her current research deals with the fiction of Edwidge Danticat. 

 

Lost Girl, Taipei

 

cleaning my eyelashes over the sink

a custom practiced by most girls in your city you

never thought it odd

 

how I could make a crumpled pair spring back to life

reanimate the coiled mess with rubbing

 

alcohol and a q-tip.

it’s nice when someone notices the labor of good looks.

 

Your mother would draw me a bath in her massive tub

I wonder if she hoped I would come out

 

a girl worth calling daughter

sometimes we would eat so much that I felt drunk

 

in the lotus bud coconut jelly shark fin stew

wishing that someone would please speak English with me

 

ashamed to favor a language

(what kind of scholar does that make me?)

 

At the night market once I

saw a couple like us

 

wanted to scream out

help us choose

 

we are too indecisive and enamored with our idiosyncrasies

a pleasured mouth

does not need to speak.

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Poetry

Kanchan Chatterjee – four poems

April 16, 2018

Kanchan Chatterjee works in the Finance Ministry of the Government of India as a tax officer. He has been writing poems and haiku since 2012. His poems have been published in a variety of ezines. He received an honourable mention for his entry in the 2017 Eto En Oi Ocha haiku contest in Japan.

 

rendezvous

the old man
looked up and
recognized me
instantly…

I said I’d
not expected him
this time

(must be in his late eighties
these days,
you know)

he winked

started
to laugh…

I noticed
a few
teeth
missing…

 

~

 

Chutu Palu – at the bend     

more hills, a car

passes by

us

dim

sun

more trees, here it’s slow

moving

everything, feels

good

3 hours till

i’ll

be near

canary hill, open cast

 

mines, cycle load of

coal, in gunny bags, on the way

to Ranchi

nobody bothers

about them

or the half-cut

hill

 

by which a new road

is being

laid, they say

development, damn

those trees

we don’t see

any more vultures

here

 

the kid in the front seat

starts another game in his cellphone

(or whatever)

never looks out the moving window, misses

a brilliant

waterfall

 

her mom isn’t happy

she says too much trees

around, her hubby with an i-pad nods

absentmindedly

 

they yawn

and wait. . .

 

~

 

monsoon

he takes another sip
closes the door
to the fog, the garbage heap, a barking
dog

he is ready
for something . . .

 

~

 

autumn

on this rainsoaked day
amidst crazy wind
watching the highway no. 33, through the moving window,
the distant hills
and miles and miles
of swaying grass – a train cutting through
all these;
whistling, homebound . . .

I forgive
myself

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Poetry

Lei Wang – two poems

March 6, 2018

Lei Wang has been a science reporter in Hong Kong and a private investigator in San Francisco. She is now a dream coach in Shanghai for Chinese high schoolers while simultaneously pursuing her own writing.

 

LIGHTS, PUERTO PRINCESSA

 

In that practical small city,

they string lights on trees

for tuk-tuk drivers to navigate

the night. This is what the

tour guide tells us, but I don’t

believe her reasons quite

because the lights are prettier

than they need to be, bright gold

orbs instead of the virtuous blue

of efficient fluorescence. He,

ever the voice of reason, says,

“But it is bad for the trees.”

It is true the trees cannot sleep,

but if I were a tree, gold-orb

daydreams would be alright by me.

Somewhere on this island

a romantic is masquerading as

a city planner.

~

Waiting for Mammals to Grow Old

based on the true story of a Hong Kong tycoon

 

They say he imported large animals

newly retired from zoos. Giraffes

tired of craning and zebras wanting

to blend in. The things rich men do.

How sovereign even their whims.

Imported by helicopter, not the sick,

merely the slow dying. Even in zoos,

air-brushed lions. No grey manes

but silver-backed gorilla okay since

George Clooney. He could have afforded

young pandas, kept them in bamboo.

He took the infirm, not needing to, and

raised them a mountain from civilization,

his preferred distance of residing.

At the funeral, five hundred people

appeared, four hundred ninety-nine

surprised the others were there,

almost the whole of those still

living in that Luddite’s paradise.

Each one with mouth bursting

of the slippery ways he entered

their lives—a loan, a job,

suspicious miracles—and left

like the opposite of a shadow and

the definition of a fish. The secrets

that give us meaning: a giraffe

no longer bright of mottle

standing in the forgotten green of a

twilight estate, its years without

anxiety to come the simple

consequences of one old tycoon’s heart.

Not the grand surgery but the slow

unraveling. What we do when

there is no longer anything we must.

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Poetry

Beaton Galafa – three more poems

February 21, 2018

Beaton Galafa is a Malawian writer. He currently lives in Jinhua, China where he is studying for a Master’s in Comparative Education at Zhejiang Normal University. His work has appeared in literary magazines, journals, and books such as Betrayal, The Seasons, The Wagon Magazine, The Bombay Review, Bhashabandhan Literary Review, Kalahari Review, The Maynard, Atlas and Alice, South85 Journal, The Voices Project, Birds Piled Loosely and Nthanda Review.   

 

In Air

 

Let the bird fly

beyond clouds and the sun

that hang

loosely

in

air

 

far

and high

 

to places where thunders rest in summer.

So that when it tumbles to earth

its nose must dive into sands and whispers of rivers

its wreckage twined with bones and skulls of seas

for the fish and sea monsters to drink from its veins

and forever be the red strip of sea which the sun

bounces off.

 

~

 

Flow of Life                  

                 

Sometimes we underrate ourselves

when mudslides revolt in our streets

wiping us off

the sun’s face

in our hundreds

Crumbling

hubs

of

civilization

Crawling, creeping, sweeping us clean

burying us

under

without rituals, without tears, without trial

To be trampled by the Creator

as

He

descends

After horns announce the apocalypse.

In the distant east screams howl in the winds

As rivers burst in streets and homes

To carry with them logs, bodies, temples

Beyond seas and rivers of the mountain

Where

Scattered

like                  mustard seed

not even search teams will find them:

Sacred killings for the rain god

Drizzling along with hail and thunder.

 

~

 

Insatiable Well

 

This place is void

There was a well once

Where dust crams the seat

It rested from morning till night

Giving life to thirsty passersby

But death came knocking one dark night

The rest you will read on terrazzo at the grave.

 

 

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Poetry

Beaton Galafa – three poems

February 12, 2018

Beaton Galafa is a Malawian writer. He currently lives in Jinhua, China where he is studying for a Master’s in Comparative Education at Zhejiang Normal University. His work has appeared in literary magazines, journals, and books such as Betrayal, The Seasons, The Wagon Magazine, The Bombay Review, Bhashabandhan Literary Review, Kalahari Review, The Maynard, Atlas and Alice, South85 Journal, The Voices Project, Birds Piled Loosely and Nthanda Review.   

 

Caged in a Flat World

 

The world can never be round

We could not have found all the gourds and drunkards

Swerved off in times of earthquakes and tsunamis

Or whirled to its edges by hurricanes

They would be dangling on threads of spiders

Praying for the tenderness in a mother’s hand

To lift them up from jaws and claws of darkness.

 

We wouldn’t have grown shells on our skin

After the blood baths from wolves,

We would just float in space

Our lives not tilting at the axis along with earth’s.

Or, our murderers would have washed down

To rot in deep sea caves at the world’s laterals.

Yet here we are, caged in this brutish world

Its ends so intent on getting us locked on its islands

Of war, murder and treachery.

With lies of horizons that stretch to as far as they can

And the end meeting the beginning. Where earth

Stands still.

 

~

 

Emptiness           

                       

is a dark cave in a river

that swallows scubas

with a thousand divers staring

at the bright shadows of the sun and its rays

hanging freely from splendour.

 

~

 

Lonely

 

in love

there is just me.

and the many kisses I throw at the moon

when it flees the night in space

its lips iced with frost.

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Poetry

Kanchan Chatterjee – two poems

January 22, 2018

Kanchan Chatterjee works in the Finance Ministry of the Government of India as a tax officer. He has been writing poems and haiku since 2012. His poems have been published in a variety of ezines. He received an honourable mention for his entry in the 2017 Eto En Oi Ocha haiku contest in Japan.

 

forbesganj

 

slow cold wind all night then
it dies at the daybreak . . .

three white ducks
chanting down the pond
someone pushes the handpump
gush of water

muffled cough, a kid’s cry

dampish firewood squeaks and burns
smoke – they’re preparing some tea

the old shopkeeper says
(rubbing his palms)
it’ll be colder
than yesterday . . .

 

~

 

you can hear the
bangles


and laughter
and a child’s cry
and a muffled cough
while you sip
your first chai and
watch
the mynahs sitting on the
electric wires

the chaiwallah talks
about his son’s
marriage and the distant roar
of a tiger
he heard near Guwahati . . .

&

the nearby
sawmill comes alive
suddenly, the mechanical sound, monotonous . . .

&

you think
about the long gone train
that must be reaching home
in an hour or so . . .

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