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.

A friend told me that a death in the family feels like being in between the worlds, but when you come back to reality you see that the dishes are still dirty and the litter boxes are overflowing.  So the two weeks I mentioned in my last message turned into two months, and I see that a rough draft of a poem went up accidentally. That will go back when the artwork is complete — sorry for any confusion.

This is the fifth anniversary of the website.  Sadly, I have to postpone the grand posting I’ve been working on because my father died this week and his funeral is today. So I will spend the day crying and laughing and hugging people and will postpone this anniversary.  It’s a tradition in my family to postpone dates.  If we can postpone Christmas, I can postpone an anniversary, right?  I will see you in two weeks with the special anniversary post.

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.