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– Todd Boss
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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.
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
~
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
~
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
~
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
Continue readingNancy L. Conyers has an MFA from Antioch University in Los Angeles and lived in Shanghai from 2004-2009. She has been published in Lunch Ticket, The Manifest-Station, Role Reboot, The Citron Review, Alluvium, Tiferet, and Hupdaditty, and contributed the last chapter to Unconditional: A Guide to Loving and Supporting Your LGBTQ Child, by Telaina Eriksen. Honey Lou is adapted from a novel she is writing entitled A Walk in the Mist. Her website is www.nancylconyers.com
Honey Lou Parker was a native Texan with tumbleweed flowing through her veins. Honey had bottled blond hair, a ballsy laugh, and she truly believed in the Texas truism, the higher the hair, the closer to God. She was big, in all manner and form: her hair was big, her mouth was big, and her body took up the whole width of a Shanghai sidewalk. When she walked, her enormous breasts and generous backside undulated in opposite directions, giving her the effect of a human tsunami. Honey’s calling card, though, was her beautiful, flawless skin. It was porcelain white with nary a pore or wrinkle and no matter where Honey went, people complimented her on her perfect skin. They kept their eyes on her face, as much as they kept their eyes on her substantial girth.
When Lisa first arrived in Shanghai, the first thing Honey said to her was, “Lisa, darlin,’ it’s not real important to learn the language.” Honey had been in Shanghai for almost three years and she’d only managed to learn to say hello, goodbye and thank you in Mandarin, all with a bad accent. When she said xie xie, thank you, Honey, in all her Texan splendor, would say shay shay, shay shay and she was damn proud of her self for it.
“They oughta learn how to speak English,” Lisa heard Honey say one day to the posse Honey always travelled with when she passed by as they were sitting outside of Starbucks, the only store foreigners recognized at what passed for a mall in Jin Qiao. “They oughta learn how to speak English. I mean I’m not having my taxes pay for some wetback to fill up a seat in our school system, and then you’re going to tell me they don’t have to speak English? Not on my nickel, they’re not.” She was talking about the Mexicans in Texas.
“Honey Lou, when you’re right, you’re right, and, sweetheart, you are right on this one, right girls?” said Sheralee Watson. The posse nodded in unison. The posse were all tai tais from Texas—housewives of the Texas oil barons who believed they were lording over Shanghai, all of whom hated Shanghai for what it wasn’t, and couldn’t see Shanghai for what it was. Like Chinese women who travelled together and linked arms to create their friendspace, the posse always travelled in a pack. Instead of linking arms, the posse was armed with iPhones covered by bejeweled cases of the Texas flag that Honey had gotten made for them in Yu Yuan.
“So, ladies, how much Chinese have y’all learned?” Lisa asked as she walked past their table. The question was out of her mouth before her mind could tell herself not to start something. Honey whipped her head around and fixed Lisa with her Texas stink eye.
“Well, Lisa Downey, I’ll be.”
“Hey, Honey. Ladies.” Lisa nodded in their direction.
“How much Chinese have we learned? Now, Linda darlin’, that’s a whole different story, a whole different ballgame,” Honey sputtered.
“Why’s that, Honey?”
“It’s just different, is all.”
“Why? I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Well, well,” Honey was flustered. She wasn’t used to people challenging her. In the three years Lisa had known her, she’d never seen Honey Lou flustered. She ran the posse and she ran the Expat Women’s Club like a Chinese warlord—often wrong, never in doubt. She was enjoying seeing Honey Lou scramble. Most people, when they’re flustered, get red in the face and splotchy necks, but Honey’s skin became brighter and glowed like a Texas click beetle.
“We’re in China, Honey, so if I follow your logic, then shouldn’t we learn to speak Chinese?”
“We are not here illegally, Lisa Downey, we are rightfully here.” Honey had quickly gotten her footing back. “And, furthermore, we do not want to live here, we’re here because our husbands have come here for work. Legally, I might add. And we are here giving people jobs, not taking jobs away from them, for God’s sake! We are putting food on their tables, not taking food away from them.”
“Honey, how is someone in Dallas who speaks Spanish taking food off your table, other than clearing off your large plates?” Every single one of the posse were tapping away on their iPhones, pretending like they weren’t listening.
“Oh for God’s sake, Lisa, it was just an expression. Let’s not spoil our morning with this. It’s just not the same situation, is all.” Just then a bell tinkled.
“Well, I’ll be, saved by the bell,” Honey Lou looked at her iPhone and tapped the screen with her long, fake fingernail. “That’s my signal, girls. I’ve got to go get my facial.” Her large body rippled wildly as she stood up. She winked at Lisa and said, “The good Lord works in mysterious and wondrous ways, wouldn’t you say, darlin’?”
Because Honey had never learned how to speak Mandarin, she never learned that there are no secrets in China, and Honey had a dirty little secret she was sure nobody knew about. The secret to Honey’s facials, the secret to her beautiful skin was that she ate soup. Placenta soup. Human placenta soup. Placenta soup that came from aborted babies. Aborted girl babies.
Before Honey arrived in Shanghai she believed in the sanctity of two things—the flag of Texas and the goodness of her God. Now, she also believed in the power of those girl babies’ placentas. She told herself it was better for that soup to slide down her throat than for those babies to be strewn on the side of the road somewhere, no better than a stray dog.
Yes, the good Lord did work in mysterious and wondrous ways. He gave Honey the ability to cast her born again eyes downward when the weekly delivery of special treasure soup was delivered to her kitchen door, and the ability to cast her eyes upward in a heavenly thanks as the luscious liquid continued to work its wonders on Honey’s luminescent skin.
The good Lord also gave Honey’s housekeeper a big mouth. Honey’s housekeeper told every other housekeeper in Honey’s neighborhood about the soup and those housekeepers told other housekeepers, who told the drivers, who told the security guards, who told their wives. Some of the housekeepers who worked for Mandarin speaking foreign women told the expat women and those women told their friends. It didn’t take long before the only secret about Honey’s facials was that Honey was the only one who thought nobody knew.
A few weeks after Lisa saw Honey at Starbucks, she heard Honey in Yu Yuan buying embroidered pictures. She turned around and watched from a distance as Honey repeated shay shay, shay shay, and she listened and laughed to herself as the other people in the small stall shrieked, Waah, na ge laowai hen pang! “Wow, that foreigner is really fat!” Honey just kept smiling at them, and nodding her head. Shay shay, shay shay.
Lisa walked over to the stall where Honey was transacting her purchase.
“Lisa darlin’, good to see you,” Honey said and gave her an air kiss on each cheek. “Look at these gorgeous embroideries I just bought.”
“They are gorgeous, Honey. How much did you pay for them?”
“Oh lord, they were a steal, 500rmb.”
“You ought to learn how to speak Mandarin, Honey,” Lisa told her.
“Why would you say that?”
“Because you’ll get a better price if you bargain in Mandarin.”
“I’ve never heard such a thing.”
“It’s true. Have you ever tried to bargain in Mandarin?”
“Lisa, are you going to start this all over again? I thought we finished with all that.”
“Honey, darlin’, I’m trying to help you. Those pictures you just bought…guess what? I got them for 100 rmb each.”
“You did not!”
“Yes I did and it’s because I bargained in Mandarin. If you do that they’ll give you a better price.”
“Oh for God’s sake.”
“It’s true.” Lisa turned around to the shopkeepers and said, Ru guo ta hui shuo Putonghua, ni men hui gei ta hen hao de jia qian, dui ma? “If she spoke Mandarin you would give her a good price, right?”
“Dui de!” Right, they all yelled.
“Ni men pian le ta,” Lisa told them. You cheated her.
Hahaha. They gave Lisa that sick bu hao yisi smile.
The shopkeepers weren’t the only ones who were cheating Honey. Her husband, Harlan, was too. What a cliché he was, a balding, pot-bellied, white foreigner with a bad comb over and a beautiful, young Chinese girlfriend.
Lisa watched one night as a couple of stunning girls went up to Harlan and his friends in Xintiandi. Soon the waitress was pulling another table up, serving drinks and before you know it, Harlan was walking off hand-in-hand with one of the girls. If Honey were a real friend, Lisa would have told her what she’d seen, but she wasn’t a true friend and there was something in her that enjoyed watching the whole situation unfold, something base in her that took perverse pleasure in knowing that Harlan had his girl in an apartment in the same apartment complex Lisa and Sheila lived in, away from the expat compound, and in knowing that Harlan knew Lisa knew. Lisa wondered if Honey knew and if that were the reason why Harlan and Honey quickly left Shanghai the following fall. She also wondered where in the goodness of God’s good Texas Honey was going to buy her girl baby placenta soup.
Continue readingWithin Singapore, Verena Tay (www.verenatay.com) has published two short story collections, Spectre (2012) and Spaces (2016), and four play collections, and edited twelve fiction anthologies, including Math Paper Press’ popular Balik Kampung series. She is now working on her first novel as part of her PhD studies in Creative Writing at Swansea University.
woman sits
Today hot. Lucky I rest.
artist draws woman sitting
In her curves, there are lines, and her lines, curves.
friend paints artist drawing woman sitting
Get right – shape, position, colour – you have a picture.
i describe friend painting artist drawing woman sitting
I see. I like. I write.
you read me describing friend painting artist drawing woman sitting
Your view?
~
slit-
eyed
you
suck
a
cigarette
curl your shoulders
fumes feed your
i me mine
beliefs
you
exhale
words
exploding then rules
till now
you
shock
language
and audiences have learned
applause
illiterate i
read only your body and
wonder how you
won respect when all you
do is
fuck off
~
Each pencil-charcoal shaded paper
Human form perfectly caught
Three profiles facing left
Two girls, one man
Two shirtless youths
One full-bodied, gazing left
One seated, turning right
Note their ethnicity
Together,
Black-white
Correctness
Too much
~
roads are never equal. poets always claim:
wander to wonder, explore bent undergrowths,
discover divergence. the efficient truth is
we’re forest shrews scurrying black
the everyday path until we know well
how many steps taken to and from home,
where to swerve, not trip over dip-holes,
when to slow down, not fly over bumps,
and crash into our enemies’ mouths.
surprise is far too risky. can we survive?
ages hence, the woods can be just as glorious
by absorbing how way leads on to way.
evolved into blind mole rats, we’ve kept alive.
so why can’t we hold our heads up high?
Continue reading
Luis Morales-Navarro (莫路) is a writer/coder interested in natural language processing, computational literature, networked physical computing, poetry and speculative fiction. Currently he is a Resident Research Fellow at New York University Shanghai.
Clusters of dust blossom with the winter
In my body there are kegs of Chinese beer
I inhale blue-white air
Walls drip sweat and all I want is water
The bottle a place in darkness
The forest trail
The wide bridge flowing with the currents
and the end of wilderness,
craving juices, gazing at plums that quench thirst
Springs melted from snow and ice on top of the
mountain converge underground,
moving along holes and cracks in the basalt
There are many aged boats
The spring adjusts the seasons with the wind of her soul
It dissolves silicon dioxide in surrounding rocks to form
silicate-type mineral water with low sodium
from beneath the volcanic basalt surface
purified through the rock stratum before gushing out from below
suitable for long term consumption
Clouds poured into her mouth
become words walking her gardens
Two drops on a leave laugh as if sharing an inside joke
all this came to pass with us
money plants creep in through the water
Unintelligible characters swim
Flowers are born, beautiful people surrounded by water
I ask Feng Xiaoyang about the Nongfu Spring
He says it doesn’t exist
~
for Claudia Mejía
Demonstrate your understanding in 511
a conversation with Borges
a petition from an old severe peasant
—after surfing for three years— in Nanjing
the emperor receives the patriarch of Hindustan
these happenings and these beings are momentaneous
their mansions raided corporal punishment
too feeble to talk playing decent go pre-dream
brought to the house confiscated poetry
on the road in particular, the datalogs
flake across the desk if one person committed a crime
revise the law if the household had seniors or children
—full of nihilism— the Bodhidharma:
I don’t know who I am. who is it?
three pounds of lino. the letter kills.
~
I dreamed I was a profile. When I woke up I ignored
if I had a dream where I was a profile or
if I was a profile dreaming of being me
It all started when we looked at each other
with a special tactile chemistry
When the world crashes on my hand
other people and I are of the same womb
made me what I am
we are just good friends
I’m a wéixīn man
And we are still good friends
software for the purpose of finding you
wéixīn man with character amnesia
use it only as a backup
that its sorry was dancing
I close my eyes and there you are
When my hand laughs
I’m a wéixīn man, and I’m gonna say
You know the way it is
watching every glyph
content not for sale
“At thirty a man stands”
giving the right to use his content
with no fees or charges payable to him by them
export it everywhere in the world
Another wéixīn man
By its grace i am new man
And my song is filled with joy
Of its image I am a reflection
“At forty a man is no longer puzzled”
under rocks and a thousand places
in order to comply with applicable laws or regulations
his data may have already been disclosed
pack it in a crate and ship it off
because autocomplete software
A gust rises I’m a wéixīn man
With predictive text from the 1950s conquering my words
But we are still friends. The software studies my habits
And my answer sounds like me with character amnesia
like me at my most generic
Continue reading
Cyril Wong is the author of The Lover’s Inventory, and other works of poetry and fiction in Singapore.
Ben Lerner writes in The Hatred of Poetry,
“Everybody can write a poem,” and asks if
“the distillation of your innermost being …
[can] make a readership, however small, a People …?”
Maybe because I’m not American
or because I was never a Universalist,
I’ve always thought, “Of course not!”
I write for you (as you watch your action-movie
beside me on a plane drifting through turbulence)
but more likely for me—or the infinity within me/us
that doesn’t toss, swell or shrink beyond
the vicissitudes of self, the words we tell ourselves.
~
What is the word that means
an existence of looking
both inwardly—without judgment
or desire to derive absolute sense—
towards an unfolding profundity,
and outwardly from somewhere
beneath the surface of our bodies
at every word, gesture and
reciprocity passing for time, all
without feeling divided, absent,
sorrowful or benumbed?
(Meditation.)
~
We think about moving to Malaysia
when we have enough money
or when we run out of excuses.
Anywhere freer than Singapore.
Not freer, but across the causeway
we could disappear in that hinterland
that isn’t an island; that is vast enough.
We talk of leaving but never go.
Night inclines us to each other.
Two homosexuals in a possibly more
conservative country—the irony.
Or maybe not at all ironic, since
being invisible is what we’re used to
and now it could be an advantage.
Yes, the irony. No hope of changing
society; instead we pick a Malaccan
condo beside a hospital, as healthcare
is important in our old age. Imagine
that: we might die together
far from here, when our home here
shades into a dream we might finally
depart, before waking up together
inside a better dream. Our merging
bodies on the bed; peninsula
withstanding the sea.
Continue readingMiho Kinnas was re-transplanted from Shanghai to Carolina. She struggles with non-metric units but is beginning to carry on with writerly activities.
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 Equatorial Calm (2016)
Wind turns
The scent is
Andromeda
Two pebbles
expand
the white ocean
Thirty years
not wasted
Thirty years
~
To counterbalance
a kettle and a sponge
ex-lovers stand by
A story is
the notations
in the margin
Fill the glass
let water overflow
braid with light
Must practice
studying you
quickly
I examine
the relationships
by rotating my notebook
I coat the sky
yellow ocre, much white
and a touch of black
Continue reading
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.
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
~
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
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
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
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
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
BRANDON MARLON is a writer from Ottawa, Canada. He received his B.A. in Drama & English from the University of Toronto and his M.A. in English from the University of Victoria. His poetry was awarded the Harry Hoyt Lacey Prize in Poetry (Fall 2015), and his writing has been published in 170+ publications in 23 countries. www.brandonmarlon.com.
Destitute refugees craving a haven
discovered themselves foreigners in a foreign land
yet safe and spared, culture-shocked Semites
grateful for remoteness from genocidal Europe
even if desperate for food and housing
while old barracks with bunk beds
were hastily converted into group shelters called
home.
Addled by their alienage, they haunted
soup kitchens during prandial hours,
puzzling over characters, admiring
Huangpu River from the Bund, Cathay Hotel,
and Beaux Arts manses of a cosmopolitan
milieu disrupted on a day hateful and fateful
by invasive imperial Axis neighbors
who soon cordoned them off like cattle
into Hongkou district, a sector restricted,
reserved for the stateless.
An unlikely Judeo-Sino bond was forged there
where strangers and locals shared hardship, where
the chicken liver kreplach and the pork won ton
encountered their dumpling dopplegänger
in proximate tureens and bowls
steaming hot with comfort’s scents.
At war’s end, conquerors retreated and troubles
subsided, parting those who together
had borne woes, had endured mutual foes,
and earned the dignity due survivors.
In days to come, they would periodically
reflect on past trials and fearful years,
fondly recalling erstwhile ties ever
preserved in the amber of the moment.
Continue readingCyril Wong is the author of The Lover’s Inventory, and other works of poetry and fiction in Singapore.
1
Dreaming of Kyoto in Osaka
and growing old in that town
where shrines would knock
tranquility into us at every turn
and a Buddha statue is composed
from ashes of the dead.
But food would hold no flavour
for your curried tongue; ryokans
have no proper chairs and the floor
is not for sleeping. A distant mountain
we’d never climb together
reminds me of our bodies
melded peacefully on a funeral pyre.
2
Living is
dying is loving
us for now.
3
When the mind moves faster
than light and so it freezes—
our marriage plays out in multiple
scenes on a distant screen;
forming, deforming, un-
forming. Until the return to where
we are now, like a rubber band
springing back to its original shape.
What am I left with that I’m left
to continue? What keeps me going
except for the slow hand of time
and the minutiae of love?
4
My mother told her children we must
never marry anyone outside our race,
never leave the church,
never become queer. I’ve never
been more Chinese, more holy, more
conventional than when I’m with you,
my lovely Indian man.
Your Hindu sacred thread moves
against my skin like a shifting line
in sand. When my wrist gets caught
in its loop, I know we’re conjoined and
already blessed.
~
Not that it made a difference: humiliation
instead of triumph, Kafkaesque equivocation
of government officials, the press, social media—
not what we had in mind. Who knew that terrorists
would need courses in corporate messaging?
Tourists clutch their purchases against their chests,
whispering ISIS or Al-Qaeda under stalled breath
before crossing the street or re-entering trains
that pick up speed once the last body is cleared,
keeping to panicked schedules and bypassing history.
Debuting at Bangkok’s Min Buri court, my sallow face
oiled by camera flashes should have disappointed
many who thought (like me) the bomber in the photo
was handsome. This kind of work ages you,
I’d tell you. Running like a mad dog from Turkey
to Laos, Cambodia, then Thailand, praying over
forged passports, bomb-wires, bracing for the blast—
such travail sucks the soul’s buoyancy from within…
But I can’t be sorry, it’s too late to be sorry—
“Uyghur” or “Uighur”, which is correct? Who knows
that I misspelled “Istanbul” in my passport?
What does sending these people back to China
have to do with us? they must ask. Grey Wolf, Grey
Wolves: shoppers at Siam Paragon must believe
it refers to the latest brand of underwear or shoes—
If this is the life I chose, then this is the life
I’ve chosen, I remind myself. With no more fight
left in me, I’m dragged lackadaisically between stations
like a drugged delinquent. From the police car,
I spot the Erawan Shrine again, one of the faces
of four-faced Brahma merely abraded; as if the deity
had deigned to permit a cursory show of vulnerability
before lustre is restored; with dancers prancing
around it to welcome, with intolerable grace, the passing
of tragedy, the immutability of change, a new day.
~
A birdcall I mistake for warm vibrato, a soprano warming up becoming the koel I recognise but shrink from recognising, because I want not to break the surface of sound with my discrimination of that sound; acknowledging instead that surface is singular, stretching from koel to these ears then my skull, travelling along the underside of skin to inspire goosebumps, the thrill of an alto trill beginning in my own throat; an unending surface of vibration, perhaps, that merges with the vibration of cells in my body, going deeper still—but what’s deeper than the wavering surface of everything? (Nothing.)
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