A Magazine of Many Arts

Coming of Age

She shakes a red-brown hip jangling with clamshells,
her shimmering thighs bright with the out-flowing tide
and calls to me in a loon’s voice.

“Don’t be afraid of the mud, honey.
It’s so good for your complexion!”

She is lip-smack salty and trade wind persuasive.
The furrows of her hair are slick with chlorophyll
that stains the string of corals at her throat.

“Just leave your clothes there. Great Mother!
Haven’t I seen you naked before?”

Not like this, bared to the bluefin sky,
flesh cold as a crested wave waiting to fall
into the rip current, tongue like a sand dollar.

“I’m…I’m not going to drown, am I?
You said I can breathe under water now.”

Pearly teeth flash behind a grin wide as a dolphin’s.
Fingers like rockweed tendrils reach out to tug me in.
Her laughter is a fall of rain on a brine pool.

“Trust your body, little minnow.
It knows what it’s doing.”

Stumbling into the sea foam, the transformation takes me;
skin to glistening scales, neck to slitted gills,
and we dive, a pair of salmon swimming home, always home.

 

This pair of human hands used to belong to
Neither da Vinci, nor Mozart, nor Napoleon
Nor Newton, nor Van Gogh, nor Thomas Edison
Nor Shakespeare, nor Doug Henning, of course nor Li Bai
Look, the blood is still dripping!

But it once warmed the heart of a frozen crow
Opened the door to a stranger starving to death
Added a handful of soil to a withering rose
Waved to a breeze blowing from nowhere
Wouldn’t it be a big fool to buy these hands?

Most important, the hands carry with them authentic spirits
Inherited from gods though still unknown to us, and the owner
Has cut them off to donate to an honorable human cause
Our initial price is set at ten hundred thousand
200, 200? 300, 300? 350, 350? 400,400?

Icy planet, black and orange,
methane dwarf, Kuiper anomaly,
Clyde Tombaugh found you
from a hill in Flagstaff in 1930,
dancing along the edge of the universe.
Victoria Burley, an 11-year-old Oxford girl
named you after the Roman god
of a place cold and distant.
Chaotic orbiter, trans-Neptunian,
what cold comfort, self-knowledge,
what peace there must be to persist
in such refuting definition.

 

the fog remembers
promises once watered
by cascades of dew
each speck of mist
a prism into the past

when these men and women
lived and breathed
walking this valley soil
with trowel and shovel
digging deep

to bury the seeds of dreams
first nurtured in
Armenia, Japan, Arkansas
Italy or Oklahoma
now they return

during this first fog
of the year
California’s heartland smothered
beneath a cotton-thick mist
the cold means nothing

when that thick mud
squishes between bared toes
hardened by a long walk
along Route 66;
with water comes growth

even after death
those seeds still grow in
this dirt, this promised land
that blessed kiss of moisture
the musk of earth heavy in air

the joy of grit
between each finger, the smile
at spying a first seedling;
one blessed night to return home
the fog remembers

 

for now, they have all stopped
pretending to be more than chimpanzees
struggling ferociously for power, sex, fame or money

lying seemingly still on each padded shelf
under the roof of hardened darkness
is a bleeding devil
tightly enclosed within a decent
human shape, as if in a vast morgue

high above them is squatting a bloated serpent
with a body of billion eyes all viciously open
to watch for so many tiny dragons
chasing and collecting the deformed soul
trying desperately to escape
form every fleshy casket

Changming Yuan, 7-time Pushcart nominee and author of Chansons of a Chinaman (2009) and Landscaping (2013), grew up in rural China but currently tutors in Vancouver, where he co-publishes Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan and operates PP Press. With a PhD in English, Yuan has recently been interviewed by [PANK], and had poetry appearing in Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, Exquisite Corpse, London Magazine, Threepenny Reviewand 769 other literary journals/anthologies across 28 countries. In 2013, Yuan has been bitten by 3 poisonous snakes.

The straw beneath me has already
sent up its ghosts, wisps of smoke,
to pester me like flies.
Beads of sweat jewel me
like a rose at dawn.

“What have you learned?” they ask me,
the men grim as iron.

I’ve learned that missing
his hands’ gentleness
pierces like thorns.

“What do you confess?” they ask.

I confess the flames feel
cool as snow’s caress
compared to the heat of his body.

“You pay for your sin
with your soul,” they tell me.

I paid for my wild dance
with my wild heart.

“Don’t you care for the cost?” they ask.

I remember the patter
of his lips on mine
like clink of coin,
bright as candle-flame in shadow,
how in daylight all that gold
turned to dust.

The Leaf Burning

Smoke goes up in curls and ribbons;
Samuel Wainwright burns off his leaves.
He claims each one’s a page in the year,
Prophecy unfurling as they turn to light ash.

The peeking neighbor children know their leaves don’t do that.

Sam’s solemn this year as he tends the burn-pile–
Because of the wind he’s on the front lawn.
As he reads the smoke-stories, he mutters them softly
–A stranger could tell that it isn’t good news.

I bring him mulled cider as a tribute, a pledge.

“A hard year,” he says, adding a new handful,
“Of hard knocks, surprises, and very few laughs.”
I can’t read the smoke-script of old growth on fire
But it almost looks jagged, because of his words.

“We’ll have to laugh harder when we get to,” I say.

“Remember we’ll cry later, to not be too shocked.”
I blink as the sooty wind stings my eyes.
“Why do I bother?” he demands of the flame-tongues.
“When it’s never much help to know life is hard?”

“If you didn’t, you’d worry all year for us, Sam.”

He takes a sip, starts to mutter again.
I just watch his expression, his eyes behind glasses,
And am grateful for autumn and springtime and him–
The way his sharp knuckles are clenching the handle.

Something in him, and leaves, looks out for us.

I can stand years like this with that thought in my head.
We can burn off the last year, be braced for the next.

HEART OF GLASS

While my blood flowed warm and red
covered by flesh as white as snow
your heart ran slow and cold
sheathed by a molten iron will

It was always about the heart
yours chiseled of frosted glass
long before you gazed in that magic mirror
recognized your spiteful stare could freeze the world

Nothing could shatter your diamond hard need
puncture your hate, no slivers of glass or needles
to stitch a heart on your sleeve or back into a body
as devoid of empathy as of love

You sent another to do your dirty work
hoping to spread the wintering of your domain
but it’s hard to stopper compassion’s wellspring
and a kind word pierces a heart truer than arrows

So like you to tear out hearts with words that kill
with hopes to eat my laughter, devour my youth
make me as dead as your feelings had become
and bury any guilt with proclamations of your right

You found beauty in others distracting, covetous
unless you were the center of adoration
eventually they enclosed me in crystal
a chrysalis to preserve me from the poison you spewed

In my death your realm was still ice and isolation
but nature has a way of balancing hate and love
those who mourned planted me in their hearts
so that I could return anew, inevitable as the seasons

If you had only broken through the glass coffin of your fear
used the shards to carve a way back into the world
let the pain flow until your blood was clear, your breath light
then together we could have grown old, laughing

Hearts beating in tandem with the rhythm of the seasons
as we marveled at the melting of the snow white realm

 

ILLUMINATING THOUGHTS
Psyche’s Remorse

Each night as cool and black as weighted silk
he came to me, enveloped me, loved me
Each night he kissed me, whispered
then faded with the stars

I awoke to daylight in a fever
devoured the sight of every man
sure that one would claim me
waiting silently for my dream

The marketplace gossips laughed
A hidden husband who came in dreams?
How could I be a proper woman?
How could he support a family?

I never felt his gaze
Yet at night his heat consumed me
I began to burn in darkness
a brand never doused

Blinded by my need
I revealed my lover to the light
Winged, warm, too pure for mortal form
Eros awoke, scolded me, flew from my embrace

I searched for him, followed him,
suffered feats to be with him
and in the end the love I kindled
burned me through and through

I could not stay with people
after Eros took my heart
I only wanted love
not to rival a god’s splendor

Was it knowing godhood
he had tried to hide from me
or the knowledge of my lost humanity
that I have learned to mourn?