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