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