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