Yesterday, while avoiding the big rig frenzy on the wet highway, I heard a fascinating talk on NPR’s TED Radio Hour, Phuc Tran’s “Does the Subjunctive Have a Dark Side.” The idea of how one’s language, one’s grammar, can shape or affect a culture, has never been made so apparent to me as in this well articulated piece.
End of the Road (2002)
Neither expected nor sought, truth arrives.
One phrase, a minute turn of the
wrist, and the beginning reverses itself, becomes
vessel versus point, illuminating
the reach: one sign, two paths. The agave.
How far we’ve come to affect this place.
Last season the flowers were gray and we knew nothing.
Even the stones quivered with laughter.
And then it rained. And the creeks rose, and the bedrock
appeared as if to say your efforts lack
substance. Look underfoot. There lies the truth.
Neither expected nor sought, it arrives.
“End of the Road” first appeared in April 2016.
An update to the series. Read Khaty Xiong’s interview, and listen to/read “In Mother’s Garden.” Buy her books, or download (for free) this mini-digital chapbook, Ode to the Far Shore. A beautiful work!
The Academy of American Poets is offering a series, curated by 2016 Walt Whitman winner Mai Der Vang, featuring poems by and discussions with Hmong American poets.
Our country is enriched by its great diversity, yet we too often passively accept only what comes to us. Read these poets. Listen to their words. This is who they are. Who we are.
Glass with Memory
When I remember you
glass comes to mind,
but nothing so transparent
as an unclothed thought
or warmth trickling in
through the pipes or
under the haze of
the second night’s sheet,
no two alike except
in appearance, but under
the lamp’s unconscious glare
I find warmth spreading
across the hard surface,
telling me all is
not lost, that smoothness
persists beyond our reflection.
My poem, “From Left to Right I Ponder Politics and Kanji,” is up at Bonnie McClellan’s International Poetry Month Celebration. She’ll be presenting 28 poems following this year’s theme of “Neural Networks: The Creative Power of Language.” It’s been a fun, interesting month, with more to come.
I’m participating in the Open Mic at Words and Feathers. My contribution is “Letter from Kansas,” which appeared here last month. Kudos to Crow for hosting this virtual reading!
A recording of “What the Body Gives, Gravity Takes.”
Thank you, Finnegan Daley, for the request.
You can read the poem here.
Snow Country
desolate the reach
of space a
curved line of
white empty as
the loneliness one
feels the tone
is different on
a day like
this she says
unaware that her
words fall like
snow in the
mountains soft quiet
in the roar
no one hears
* * *
Another piece from the eighties…this first appeared here in November 2015.
I’m delighted to have five poems up at Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art. Another dream come true… Many thanks to editors Veronica Golos and Catherine Strisik for taking my work.
O at the Edges 