I Am Not Your Juxtaposition

In Amsterdam, I found myself in the courtyard of a quiet university building while exploring the city. Its brick walls were unremarkable, but as I looked up at the windows I noticed a familiar insignia welded onto the facade: VOC, the Dutch abbreviation for the East India Trading Company, spelled out in bent iron. Standing there, in what used to be that Company’s headquarters, I felt like a ghost. There aren’t enough physical remnants of Taiwan’s colonization to be evidential. Manifestations of our history don’t take shape as much as they remain invisible, a phantom… Read More »I Am Not Your Juxtaposition

Blue

Once, you equaled my size,two hundred pounds, incompletein your cow’s womb, swimmingto Magdelena Bay, Sea of Cortez,where three tons sloshed into warm waters. Linnaeus called you Balaenoptera,the winged-whale. Your fin-wings,like my hands, sans opposable thumb. Your digits now numbering four,tetradactyl to my pentadactyl limb. You weighed two hundred tons. One hundred long feet long,displacing the weight of twothousand men my size. Youlived a man’s lifespan. Salts called you sulphur-bottomfrom diatoms coloring your skin,like bullies calling you yellow-belly. Your steam-like spout haled whalersto titanic tea parties wherethey betrayed you, they betrayed you. We killed blues once en masse.We… Read More »Blue

Two Poems

Horseshoe Trail  Deep, coal-black, thicklike buttercream frosting,this soil—hides layers of fossil floor, a cake baked with seashellspetrified trees—in dreams I still bury my face in it, smell sediment of childhood sojourns:Farrell’s pond, Paradise Place, the Old Quarrysurrounded by maple woodsold farm portions, marked by tumbled rock walls.  Setting out for adventureon Horseshoe Trail, our dogs lead through cathedral canopy, then divagate furiously investigating leaf litter. We follow yips and wags over burial mounds, we think, leave small offerings:moss, maple seed, a stone. Fallen trees are lands of richly painted salamanders.I scoop up bright orange newts for my fern garden on the north side of the house, a row of… Read More »Two Poems

Two Poems

Zero Waste In the dining room,prominently displayed, there’s a hardback book titled,Silo: The Zero Waste Blueprint. Behind a wall,the turkey vultureshave been at it again:beaks and talons tearingtrash bags openfrom bursting, overstuffed bins.  The only cook on duty todayhas too much on his plate—not least a crimson red tideof beetroot vinegarsurging out of its containeronto the floor,attempting to escape. So, I head outside. The rats scatter as I pick upa blood-stained Kleenex,wilted flowers,and a welcome cardleft by long gone guests. Give Yourself a Little Space On the notice board next to the timesheets a cutely illustrated poster urges… Read More »Two Poems

Settled for Fitful

“There are three kinds of socks. If you wear red, you can’t leave your bed. Yellow means you can get up, but you must be assisted. Green means you don’t need anyone’s help. That’s what I got.” My mother smiled down at her stocky legs and green socked feet. “Want to feel my calf muscles? Go ahead, feel ’em.” I leaned over her hospital bed for an obligatory squeeze. “You do have strong muscles.” She nodded with obvious pride. “That’s because I exercise. When I had my knees done, the physical therapist told me to… Read More »Settled for Fitful

Three Poems

Someday I’ll love Bryan Liu After Frank O’Hara / After Roger Reeves / After Ocean Vuong without exception, yet apologizing,until every page is full  of last-minute dinner reservations for one. I swear I will feed us  as long as you pay for it, just write it down in this notebook and say it’s tonight’s menu.  Here is a blank page — don’t worry Bryan, it is only a mirror,and you can break it just promise me you will put the pieces together and say it’s a novel.Here is the pack of cigarettes  that will kiss you back. They might even… Read More »Three Poems

Room for Ghosts

On July 29, 2020, my grandfather lay dying alone on a ventilator in a hospital room.  On a phone call later, Nana told me that she was most attracted to his hands. “You can tell a lot about a man by his hands,” she said. Nana said that she liked the roughness of my grandfather’s hands, but also the gentleness of them. She liked the duality of a man who cut lumber and worked on motorcycles and also cooked dinner and raised children that were not his own.  I remembered his hands too. Hands that… Read More »Room for Ghosts

Two Poems

The Fruit Bowl in My Dreams Thick palette knife strokes. Wet and shiny. I paint the still life of a fruit bowl in my dreams: plump cherries,patches of blue mold on an orange, grapes, limp and shriveled, and the banana, its peel speckled, hiding sweetness.              A still life unlived,                          uneaten.     Is it considered art if nothing exists upon awakening? Strange the way humans create all these things to hold our thoughts,        our memories, outside our mind,        giving them over to others        to critique,                    analyze. A connection often frayed in the sharing,and yet holding it all inside oneself leadsto a loss of feeling… Read More »Two Poems

Two Coastal Episodes

COASTAL EPISODE #2 Morning sea-mist thick on the cove.Slowly the sun glows softly brighter, minutes pass.  The milky white thins, the outline of the coast imperceptibly emerges, veiled awakening.   Ridge pines silhouette,vapor pales into its own vanishing.Iridescence gleamson the wave-curls; southwarda gull glides above stoneshouldering out of slick sand.Low-tide revelations,the tightened mouths of sea-anemones.  Down the coastmist pillows into the hollows.Beyond the surf, the sea is calm, smoothly blue, the windsstill keeping to themselves. COASTAL EPISODE #4 Glory morning,the first free of impenetrable greyin many days.Tiny hallelujahs sparkle on the sea,southward the palisades glow. Still aloft—the pale transparent bellof the daymoon.… Read More »Two Coastal Episodes

Planetary Pardons

In the spring, I lean into the blossoms of a Texas mountain laureland inhale the grape Kool-Aid scentof childhood memories.  The forests stand no chance against our buzzing saws but instead offer us rings, intricate etchings of their storiesand the history of this land.  I drive to San Antonio in the fall,colliding with a ribbon of migrating monarchs. Their delicate paper bodiessmash into my windshield.My grill skewers them.  The next daytheir distant cousins dance around me in my yard. I watch the atmosphere swallow pollution and cough up breathtaking streaks across the sky. Is this what forgiveness feels like?