To Be Elsewhere (Hsia Yu)

We met in a coastal village
spent a lovely night without leaving an address
going separate ways.  Three years later
we meet again by coincidence.
The whole
three years spun a novel
we abandoned:
They fail to recognize themselves
as though meeting in another story
for an encounter.
One asks:  Who are you, so cold and weary
The other says: I only know a thread is loose on my sweater
          The more you pull it, the more it lengthens
          until I completely vanish.

~As seen in Poetry: The Translation Issue (June 2011)
~Translated from the Chinese by Karen An-hwei Lee

Untitlable

There are thirty ahead of me
and even the first seven seem impossible
without those letters in blue, like poetry,
garnishing my tomorrow.
Last year, the lines around the days
circled me like doe-eyed children
with stories of Beatrix's bunnies tucked
under the frayed edges of faded pink protection.
But now, each minute, each hour,
my eyes beg the clocks
for a livelier tempo
to balance my pulse.
The lines between the days
box me in as I race
in place through each tick
of every clock in sight.
My watch, my computer,
my cell phone, in the office,
I hear them all, their silence
stalks my impatience, scales my angst.
I make myself breathe in--out,
breath in--out.  Your eyes hang on
each breath that I have searched so desperately
for an honest reason to hold in,
but what I find pries open my throat
and sucks the you from me.
So one foot and then the next,
I step into the next day.
The ticks are a little quieter here.
The breaths, a little easier.
And each hour has a few less
splintering seconds.

Going Nowhere

All winter you spoke of my depression,
that darkness that slipped around me
controlling every non-movement
that even thought about moving.

All winter you spoke of my depression,
as if I needed reminding
that even the idea of the pending spring
could not hope away my numbing freeze.

All winter you spoke of my depression.
“Get out of the house,” you suggested.
“Call your friends,” you suggested.
“Go to the gym,” you suggested.

All winter you spoke of my depression
and for Valentine’s Day, you bought me a treadmill
because I was blah about my weight
but I never wanted to leave the house.

You bought me a treadmill.
Oh, the irony of your purchase!
You bought me a treadmill
so I could walk and walk and walk
in place.

Filled with Suicide - Joyce's Dublin, 1892

The Christian Brothers’ spire soared high, ripping through the passing clouds and he thought about the priest that had rented the room near his and how he used to say the spire was an arm reaching into Heaven. From the second story, he watched as the familiar shadow fell over the graves on North Richmond Street. The darkness still reached across the ground, now looking more like an “X” than a cross, with its passionate afternoon stretch over the rows of stone markers that later would ebb with the moon.

Placed just outside the Gates, a sinking ground empty filled—or so they said. They teased with their reaching hands; they believed in the wine and the broken bread, or so they should, they read. One man looked back on this street and resurrected the sunken faces, inflating them just a bit more with a still-dreary Dublin breath. Revived with only sighs of despair, sadness draped in heavy death.


As a boy, James Joyce lived with anguish just outside his window. Lives prematurely cut by their owners, the devil grabbing each one of them by the ankles as they try to climb up, cluttered his childhood panorama. What a better way to clear all the clutter than to give some of those nameless stone markers names like Doyle and Gabriel. Eveline doesn’t kill herself because she feels trapped in a male dominated world; she chooses her own life over following another. Sure they might be resurrected into a mundane world, but they are still there—living—every time someone reads their stories. Forever discussed in the present tense— ironically immortal. ~G

Words (Anne Sexton)

Be careful of words,
even the miraculous ones.
For the miraculous ones we do our best,
sometimes they swarm like insects
and leave not a sting but a kiss.
They can be good as fingers.
They can be trusty as the rock
you stick your bottom on.
But they can be both daisies and bruises.
Yet I am in love with words.
They are doves falling out of the ceiling.
They are six holy oranges sitting in my lap.
They are the trees, the legs of summer,
and the sun, its passionate face.
Yet often they fail me.
I have so much I want to say,
so many stories, images, proverbs, etc.
But the words aren't good enough,
the wrong ones kiss me.
Sometimes I fly like an eagle
but with the wings of a wren.

But I try to take care
and be gentle to them.
Words and eggs must be handled with care.
Once broken they are impossible
things to repair.

~Anne Sexton

Poem 1568 (Emily Dickinson)

To see her is a Picture --
To hear her is a Tune --
To know her an Intemperance
As innocent as June --
To know her not -- Affliction --
To own her for a Friend
A warmth as near as if the Sun
Were shining in your Hand.

~Emily Dickinson

First Snow (Mary Oliver)

The snow
began here
this morning and all day
continued, its white
rhetoric everywhere
calling us back to why, how,
whence such beauty and what
the meaning; such
an oracular fever! flowing
past windows, an energy it seemed
would never ebb, never settle
less than lovely! and only now,
deep into night,
it has finally ended.
The silence
is immense,
and the heavens still hold
a million candles, nowhere
the familiar things:
stars, the moon,
the darkness we expect
and nightly turn from. Trees
glitter like castles
of ribbons, the broad fields
smolder with light, a passing
creekbed lies
heaped with shining hills;
and though the questions
that have assailed us all day
remain — not a single
answer has been found –
walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields,
feels like one.

~Mary Oliver~
excerpted from American Primitive