My poem, “Scarecrow Sings the High Lonesome,” has been published in the summer issue of the Irish journal, Crannóg, available in printed form only. Alas, I was unable to attend the June 30 launch at the Crane Bar in Galway. Maybe next time!
“Bottom, Falling” was published in Into the Void in October, 2016, and appears in my forthcoming chapbook, From Every Moment a Second, available for prepublication order at Finishing Line Press.
I am fortunate to have a writing space of any sort, much less a comfortable one.
This is the shack that launched a thousand rejections…or something like that. It’s small, with a 10 x 12 footprint, and is getting crowded inside. The photo was taken in August 2013, a few weeks before the interior was finished out. Note the inspector, Jackboy, with his ball.
The most important feature of the shack is the air conditioner. The bookcases are nice, too, but the heat would be unbearable without the a/c unit.
Books keep migrating here. I wonder why. The cattle dog spent many hours in the dog bed, but the Chihuahuas prefer the house.
I try to use the available space as efficiently as possible, hence the skinny book cases. The painting is by Stuckist painter Ron Throop, whose art and words inspire me.
The desk is usually messier than this…
Birds often smacked into the righthand window, until I added the little mobile fabricated from a piece of cedar and wooden bird ornaments.
Yes, that’s a stationary bike. The good thing about having such a small space is that I can ride the bike and reach over for a sip of beer without having to pause.
I’ve been banging on that guitar for forty years. It’s a little worn, but then so am I. The broadside is a Galway Kinnel poem, “Little Children’s Prayer,” which joins a small group of signed broadsides in the shack, featuring poems by Jane Hirshfield, Arthur Sze and Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge. Alas, I’m running low on wall space.
Independence Day. July 4. Perhaps amidst our celebrating we might consider what those words mean. Freedom has become more precious to me of late.
In Response to Nadia’s Misdirected Email, I State Exactly What I Am Looking For
Balance. The ability to stand on one foot, on a tightrope, and juggle AR-15s,
ethics and dollar bills, while chanting the U.S. Constitution, in tongues.
Or good health.
Unweighted dreams.
A mechanism for disagreeing without needing to annihilate the opposition.
Doorways without doors, truth without fear.
A simple tulip.
One word to describe that instant between thought and pulled trigger,
intent and wish, the elevated pulse and sense of diminished space and time.
Sanctuary. Regret. Apology. Respect.
A tonic to the bitterness, a foil to the sweet.
Fitted sheets that fold. Uncommon sense.
Love in the abstract. More bacon. Smiles.
A closet that embraces everything you place in it. Everything.
The means of unfiring guns, of reversing wounds to undamaged flesh,
and rounds to their magazines, full and never used.
Self-organizing drawers. Due process.
Mothers who know only tears of joy.
One peaceful day.
Just one.
This first appeared on the blog in July 2016. The poem was a response to an email asking a question intended for someone else: “What exactly are you looking for?”
There are many reasons, known and unknown, as to why I write; I don’t like to think these reasons change necessarily, but rather, amass over time—no, maybe, these reasons refine over time. These days, I am writing a lot of elegies, so if I had to answer in the present, I write because it brings me closer to the dead, and being close to what is no longer animate, in whatever state or form, makes the pain that comes with loss just a little more bearable. Even death welcomes conversation.
Khaty Xiong was born to Hmong refugees from Laos and is the seventh daughter of fifteen brothers and sisters. She is the author of debut collection Poor Anima (Apogee Press, 2015), which is the first full-length collection of poetry published by a Hmong American woman in the United States. In 2016, she received an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award in recognition of her poetry. Xiong’s work has been featured in The New York Times and How Do I Begin?: A Hmong American Literary Anthology (Heyday, 2011), including the following websites, Poetry Society of America and Academy of American Poets. She lives in Gahanna, Ohio.
You may find Khaty’s books at the links below:
Poor Anima (debut): http://www.spdbooks.org/Products/9780985100773/poor-anima.aspx
Deer Hour (chapbook): http://www.thediagram.com/nmp/pr_xiong.pdf
Ode to the Far Shore (free, digital micro-chapbook): https://payhip.com/b/eHQw
Read a review of Poor Anima here.
Tupelo Quarterly recently published this review of Ode to the Far Shore and two other micro-chapbooks published in the Platypus Press 2412 series.
Visit the Academy of American Poets’ site to read this illuminating series on Hmong American poets, and to read and listen to Khaty’s poem, “In Mother’s Garden.” You’ll have to scroll down to find it, but it’s well worth the effort. And please read the rest of the series while you’re there.
The Fog (after H.D.)
I am dead.
You avoid me.
I open like a shell.
You expose me with your breath.
What am I, heartless one?
This was an exercise in which I used H.D.’s poem “The Pool” as the launching point. It’s fun and occasionally illuminating to try these. “The Fog” first appeared on the blog in April 2016.
My poem “What Feet Know” was featured on Postcard Poems and Prose Magazine in December 2016, and is included in my forthcoming chapbook, From Every Moment a Second, available for prepublication order at Finishing Line Press.
In this P.O.P (poets on poetry) video on the Academy of American Poets’ site, Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith reads a section from her poem “My God, It’s Full of Stars,” Seamus Heaney’s “Digging,” and discusses whether poetry should address political issues.
And to Sleep
and what we
sense if not
of our selves
or within this
space we contain
may be of
no thing touched
by one’s fluttering
eye as if
awake we see
even less the
dreams of course
real though we
hold them only
in our sleep
Another poem from the 80s. “And to Sleep” first appeared here in February 2015.
Bonsai
no feature enhanced
but beauty of
the whole and
its container the
tree is not
deprived and grows
as it must
though slowly like
a wave which
gathers itself for
years there is
no completion only
process a lapse
which presumes the
most delicate design
Originally published in Aileron in 1988, “Bonsai” appeared on the blog in December 2014.
O at the Edges 