Sun Flower Sutra
by Stuart Jay Silverman
Was this, indeed, what it was supposed to be like, …
by Stuart Jay Silverman
Was this, indeed, what it was supposed to be like,
New York, in summer, this sumac-leaved stammer,
the landscape of ineradicable grit, and towers built
as though to escape the ground they bedded in?
She walked south on Canal past City Hall choked
with an ingress of the smallest cogs of governance.
It was 8:43, and the morning light felt like coarse
linen on the fine lines of her face, her arms exposed.
A dog was peeing, a gusher washing dust from
a front tire, an Escalade’s, braced against the curb.
Now, the water came up to lap at its rocky bank.
A derelict tried for a quarter and shambled away.
“And what street compares with Mott Street,” she
thought, and thought of Nathan Road where she’d
bought red silk panties whose color bled, staining
the inside of her thighs the first time she wore them.
Somehow, the signs had become confused. One
whispered “79th” and another “3rd Ave.” A kiosk
guarded the corner. Doughy pretzels hung looped
from a wooden cart, its owner off taking a leak.
Then, the city turned over, its concrete radiating
heat into the suffocating air. The sky fell open.
A bloom like a dust of pollen overlay the dead cars.
She became the ash the sun scattered everywhere.
Stuart Jay Silverman taught college in Alabama and Illinois before retiring to homes in Chicago, IL, and Hot Springs, AR. His The Complete Lost Poems: A Selection is published by Hawk Publishing Group. Some 400 of his poems and translations appear in journals in Canada, the U.S.A., England, and France.
Tamarind Tree
by Patricia Young
Talk to me beneath the tamarind tree. Before it’s too late, …
by Patricia Young
There are just two people left who can speak [Ayapaneco] . . .
but they refuse to talk to each other. –The Guardian
Talk to me beneath the tamarind tree. Before it’s too late,
let us bury our quarrel in Tabasco’s lowlands. I am old and my heart stutters.
Let us talk beneath the feathery foliage and wide pinnate leaves.
Only we remember the hum and click of our grandmothers’ tongues.
Let us bury our quarrel in Tabasco’s lowlands. We are old and our hearts stutter.
Why do you avoid me on the street, at the market, in the Zocalo?
Only we remember the hum and click of our grandmothers’ tongues.
Before our blood runs dry, speak to me of kolo-golo-nay
on the street, at the market, in the Zocalo. Why do you avoid me?
Rest on this bench awhile. Above us pods bulge white flesh.
Before our blood runs dry, speak to me of kolo-golo-nay
and skins that grow brittle, pulp that turns to a sticky paste.
The pods above us bulge white flesh. Rest on this bench awhile.
Or shake the drooping branches and watch the fruit fall.
The skins grow brittle; the pulp turns to a sticky paste.
Last week another anthropologist washed up on our linguistic island.
She shook the drooping branches just to watch the fruit fall.
What lies between us but three sleeping dogs and a litter of cracked shells?
Another anthropologist has washed up on our linguistic island.
O to be reborn, a flat brown bean along a tree’s young shoot.
Lying between us: three sleeping dogs, a litter of cracked shells.
Brother, we speak two different versions of the same stubborn truth.
O to be reborn, a flat brown bean along a tree’s young shoot,
but the rain falling on Ayapa sounds a death knell clatter.
Two different versions of the same stubborn truth? Speak to me, brother,
beneath the feathery foliage and wide pinnate leaves.
Listen: the rain falling on Ayapa sounds a death knell clatter.
Before it’s too late, talk to me beneath the tamarind tree.
Patricia Young has published ten collections of poetry. She has won many prizes including two B.C. Book Prizes for Poetry, the Pat Lowther Award for poetry, two National Magazine Awards, the League of Canadian Poets National Poetry Prize, the CBC Literary Award for Poetry, and the Arc Poem of the Year Prize. Her poems have been included in Best Canadian Poetry in English (Tightrope Books) in 2009, 2010 and 2011.
Themba is Dead
by Emeka Okereke
Themba is dead …
by Emeka Okereke
Themba is dead
He lies in a coffin of wood
Garment of cotton
Stockings of wool
stiff as stone
Themba is dead
Taking his grief to grave
Hoping never again to be black
Themba is dead
Fifteen years ago
when he crossed the sea alive
Hopes decorated with fantasies of a white life
He lived in the shadows of others
No chance in the light
He struggled in the dark
Themba is a fool
wise only yesterday
Today he is in a coffin of wood
Garment of cotton
Stockings of wool
Stiff as stone
Now...
The municipality is taking samples
consulting the law
Making phone calls
checking cost
To decide which land owns Themba
Emeka Okereke is a poet from Nigeria. He is the Artistic Director of Invisible Borders Trans African Photography Initiative.
There You Are
by Mitchell Albert
Even once aboard, I feel the stinging cold …
by Mitchell Albert
Even once aboard, I feel the stinging cold
and as the train begins to heave
away from the old country station,
away from the spiny, alabaster mountains,
I see you,
crossing your arms in midair,
again and again,
your face alit.
At my seat, I prepare to collapse;
in my head I am already in the city.
Ten hours into the future, I sink into my bed,
next to the woman waiting in it,
and tell her of your joyous farewell.
Now, I drop my bags and watch you through the window.
You recede in slowest motion,
your eyes singing,
your whole-bodied smile gently mocking
my exhaustion.
The morning is illumined by your gesture,
not by the stingy sun.
The scarf wrapped round your head
sounds a note of vivid colour,
defying the gravelly sky.
For the last time, you wave your arms,
and I make a noise like a laugh,
astonished by the contrast between us:
you are so young,
I am so old.
Not ten years afterward I dip a shovel
into a mound of earth,
and hear the dirt smack dryly on polished wood,
and begin to describe you
to different women, in different cities.
There’s the train, there’s the distance;
no more station, no more mountains.
There you are,
slowly windmilling your arms,
and smiling.
Mitchell Albert is a London-based book and magazine editor born and raised in Montreal. He is also the editorial director of PEN International. Although he has fielded countless submissions of poetry, essays, short stories, articles and novels, his entry for the Montreal Prize represents the first time he has submitted his own work for a publication or prize.
They Disappeared in the Night
by Rafi Aaron
They disappeared in the night as the white ash of …
by Rafi Aaron
They disappeared in the night as the white ash of
the fire went cold. They disappeared with the tales
the almond tree had overheard. Only the stray
mountain goat and the restless stones that
wandered with our people for years knew their
story.
You must understand they left us the way a leper
leaves you living in the weak house of your skin.
It was late in the life of spring how could this
happen?
We searched for signs; a feather from a striped
bird, or the fruit of the peach tree wearing the skin
of the elders. Who would lead us now? The voice
of reason was dead and still dying as we argued
into the next day.
Then the old woman spoke: A nightingale is only a
nightingale when it confesses its brightest colours
are hidden in its throat and a dog becomes the
animal we know when it pulls love out of the cruel
master’s hand.
And as the mangled tree straightened a branch our
tongues curled and no one spoke. And the silence
fell, and it fell like a man falling off a cliff without
having one moment to shout out his name, only the
silence filling his body, then the gorge, then the
lives of all who knew him. This was the traveling
silence, the twin of sorrow that knocks on every
door and never tires.
Photo credit: Ruth Kaplan
Rafi Aaron‘s book Surviving the Censor—The Unspoken Words of Osip Mandelstam (Seraphim Editions, 2006) won the Jewish Book Award for poetry in 2007. A documentary on Rafi’s poetic works entitled The Sound Traveller, produced by Endless Films, has aired on Bravo TV and Book Television.
Tsunami
by Bronwyn Lovell
Grief comes in waves. …
by Bronwyn Lovell
Grief comes in waves.
I didn’t see you coming.
I’d kept guard for three years
then packed away the sandbags.
My desert island,
so far from the epicenter of you,
I didn’t think you’d ever
shake me again.
Your shifting
should have gone unnoticed,
your movements
unannounced,
never again to ripple
my safe harbour.
But the news crashed
through me
like a tsunami,
tore up my shallow roots,
shredded the new growth,
left me like driftwood.
Grief comes in waves,
hits without warning.
You can’t fight the ocean,
only try not to drown.
So I will lie here
till my sodden splinters dry
and the sand beneath me is solid.
Even now, I can feel the tsunami receding,
trickling back
to the rocks tears puddle under,
to hide in the hollows of me,
seeping away in streams
to wherever grief goes,
to be still,
lap quietly,
and wait.
Bronwyn Lovell is a poet and spoken word performer in Melbourne, Australia, where her poetry has been featured at several events, arts and writing festivals, as well as on local television and radio. She has a writing residency at Kinfolk Cafe, and she is a workshop facilitator for the Centre for Poetics and Justice.
Three Monkeys on a Dusty Bureau
by Shelagh McNally
On his dusty bureau, …
by Shelagh McNally
On his dusty bureau,
beside the mint lifesavers
my grandfather had a carving of three dark monkeys.
See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
“Which one are you?” he would ask.
“I don’t have enough hands to decide,” I replied.
“Eventually, everyone must choose,” he said dropping
another ice cube into his drink.
I left home without ever knowing which he had settled on.
My astute arrogance buffered by courageous ignorance,
convinced my life would be free of such passive despair.
I would never face the same decisions.
Now as I settle into this age of glorious imperfections
with its wrinkles and various indignities,
before the promised wisdom had settled upon these tired shoulders,
and the fierceness of youth is whittled down into memory as thin as hair,
I wait in the mornings with my neighbours
at the train station.
Their faces clutched in concentration,
lips filled with woes they don’t consider petty.
An unfocussed restlessness
disturbs the finely ordered
rhythm of my day.
More than ever I need the tenderness of understanding.
Now, I wish those monkeys rested on my bureau.
But they are gone.
Sold in some anonymous yard sale.
And still, I have not chosen.
Shelagh McNally grew up in Ottawa, escaped Ottawa to live in Toronto, escaped Toronto to live in Mexico on a beach and now lives on a tiny island outside of Montreal. She has worked as a journalist and travel writer for the last 23 years.
Unlimited
by Suparna Ghosh
it’s a monolith, thought the gull …
by Suparna Ghosh
it’s a monolith, thought the gull
alighting on her shoulder
a monument, mused the spirit
whistling through her walls
a pillar, whispered the wind
twirling ’round her limbs
a village, revealed the crier
surveying her space
a forest, roared the storm
swirling about her hair
a poem, sang the song
hearing a lute in her hum
a damask, decided the novel
etching a tale on her skin
with the sky in one eye
and the ocean in the other
she decides she’s
the gut of the earth
Suparna Ghosh is a poet and painter based in Toronto. Her poems have been featured in various magazines and anthologies. She has exhibited her works in galleries in Toronto, New York, Mumbai and New Delhi. Ghosh’s books are Sandalwood Thoughts and Dots and Crosses. Click here to see a painting by Suparna inspired by the poem.
Walking Underwater
by Mark Tredinnick
There is this quietness that hangs over North America. …
by Mark Tredinnick
For Kim Stafford
There is this quietness that hangs over North America.
As if all the days were double-glazed against themselves.
It’s uncanny. Tectonic. A kind of grief, a kind of pain
In waiting. Some sort of business unfinished. I feel it here
In the northwest, especially, though it stalked me in Toronto:
A slender quality of northern light, I guess, my southern
Self’s unused to, transposed into a season of suppressed sound,
A penumbra of silence cast by too much history, too much
Ecstatic landscape, too many plot points resolved at gunpoint,
And it feels like my life’s been lost here from the start.
I’m sorry: I’m talking out of my mood, which is jet-lagged
And dreaming heavily of what it used to think I loved.
There are plates subducting other plates on the mantle
Of my mind; there is disquiet and illness of ease. But look,
Out your windows the prayer flags have stopped
Praying, and moss deckles the edges of the oaks and firs,
Which hold out stoically inside the sweetest excuse for day-
Light I’ve ever seen. Come out with me, you say; let’s wander
Up the river. Let’s see what N’chi wana has to say about
The light… Which turns out to be a lot, and most of it profane—
The cock and the cunt, for instance, Neruda’s entanglement
Of genitals, right there, gargantuan in basalt, and wrapped in Douglas
Fir on the south bank—and glorious. The robins along the Eagle
Creek drainage seemed convinced it was spring, but the cloud
That streamed downriver on the back of the teal-blue water
And the rising wind and the narrow road coming unstuck beneath
Our feet, were all busy putting winter back in place. And for two
Hours you schooled me in the art of walking underwater; for two
Hours we carried a bright conversation all the way to the falls
And back again in rain that fell like disappointment on my head.
If you’re going to call a mountain range The Cascades, this is
What you’re going to get—their very name on the map
A long walk in the rain. But it was worth it; it nearly always is:
The afternoon crying out the grief the continent had spent
All morning—all last century, so far as I can tell—trying not to
Confess. The watershed was a Japanese watercolour at risk
Of running off the canvas, the big water carrying its muted palette
Down to the sea and taking a good part of me with it. The gorge,
It turns out, is a green sermon left largely unsaid, and as we drove
Out of it, evening lay on the river like half the psalms I never knew.
Note: The Columbia River is known by many names to the people who live along it. To the Chinook of its lower reaches, it is known as “Wimahi”; the Kwak’wala-speaking peoples of the river’s middle reaches call the river “Nch’i-Wana”. Both “Wimahi” and “Nch’i-Wana” mean “the big water” or “the big river”.
Photo credit: Vicki Frerer
Mark Tredinnick is an award-winning Australian poet, is the author of Fire Diary, The Blue Plateau, The Little Red Writing Book, and eight other works of poetry and prose. Mark lives, writes and teaches along the Wingecarribee River, southwest of Sydney. The Lyrebird (2011) is his most recent book of poems, and a new collection (Body Copy) will appear in 2012.
Waterfall
by Edith Speers
What a wonderful wasteful thing is a waterfall …
by Edith Speers
What a wonderful wasteful thing is a waterfall
that gathers the threads of a million springs
that spin them bit by bit so patiently and send them
seeping creeping weeping skeins and webs of fineness feeling
blindly down from secret hidden sources
each droplet tiny as an ant’s egg merging twining into silvery fibres
streaming through the crumbs of earth and stone
with trickle tinkle music pealing through the monster forest
as though the earth itself shed tears as though the rocks themselves could bleed
sending endless tender threads of crystal tendrils
tuneful singers prayerful pilgrims in procession
mercy wrung from heart of stone
drop by drop toward the thundering great unknown
How great and glorious is the waste of waters
pouring down in tons and tons the gathered threads of brightness boiling
tangled hanks of matter weaving into tapestries of matchless pathless passion
patterns tumbling rumbling leaping stumbling seething wreathing
veils and shrouds of greyness heaving up and over boulders’ blackness
lace of silver draping wrapping mossy greenness velvet sopping
mopping up the frayed the splayed the tattered foamy tatting
and gravel churning in the surge the hurling down of formless fabric
silk and satin glossy brown the billows denseness bunching folding
tumbling from the river’s loom that weaves the threads the forest spun
from droplets made of molten spirit
squeezed out eased out one by one
transparent tears of mercy blood of stone
How joyous boisterous is this greatness
nothing sparing spendthrift splurging surging
roisterous waters hurling headlong lifelong hymn song
roaring whirling out and over stony ledges spouting through the river’s edges
pouring down in grand abandon glassy columns crashing crushing into clouds of spray
forsaking earth but never breaking slaking thirst for godly greatness grinding fine as grit
the millstone myths of human history every second of every minute of every day
pouring down in priceless beauty spuming spewing clouds of froth and foam enduring
made of nothing never toiling timeless blameless shameless roiling waste of waters
casting down cascades of glory rising up in clouds of diamond
shouting down with chants of triumph every whisper cautious warning
rising up with life’s own laughter rainbow blessings
every second of every minute of every day
Edith Speers grew up in Vancouver, Canada. In 1974 she emigrated to Australia where she established herself as a widely published and prize-winning poet with two collections of verse.
What Gathers
by Heid E. Erdrich
Twisting stems weave …
by Heid E. Erdrich
Twisting stems weave
green to red against leaves
raindrop-shaped and tender,
shelter for blue-black berries.
We taste pure purple. We gather.
We touch our tongues to juice
we’ve asked to grow for us.
We children in our northern gardens
gather dark sweetness of saskatoons,
indigenous fruit that taught Ojibwe
beadwork patterns of vine and leaf
—–winter’s longing, worked by hand,
reminder of a hot day to come,
promise bright against threat.
Doubtless that was part of it:
what was gathering long ago,
the rush of other, the great change,
foods, woods, bison, prairie,
gods, songs, goods,
all about to alter.
We touch our tongues to summer.
What gathers now we do not know–—
some low rumble on the globe’s edge.
We gather. Nail tips and lips
stained, we do as our blood asks.
These berries the same berries
our ancestors plucked,
rolling a thumb against the curved edge,
teasing ripeness, readiness,
old ladies joking: Find me a man
can handle a woman like that!
Swoon in July sun, in sensual acts,
the fruit asks. We do as it wishes, we gather,
chilled still by long winter–—
always just behind us, always just ahead.
Photo credit: Cheryl Walsh Bellville
Heid E. Erdrich is an independent scholar, curator, playwright, and founding publisher of Wiigwaas Press, which specializes in Ojibwe-language publications. Her third poetry collection, National Monuments, won the 2009 Minnesota Book Award. Cell Traffic: New and Selected Poems is forthcoming in 2012 from University of Arizona Press.
When the Muses can’t be bothered
by Barbara Hobbie
That is when I visit their mother, …
by Barbara Hobbie
That is when I visit their mother,
skipping past the post and wire fence,
to a house of cold milk, warm cookies made with butter.
But first, a mutual wriggle inside the non-judgmental bird-dog cage,
its muddy riot of paws, tailslap, wet kisses,
down to my best friend Billy’s I-dare-ya pegleg balancing act at the rail yard,
past Charlotte’s Daddy’s hive-inducing tangy, Concord grapevine arbor,
onward to Mrs. Pinsky’s gnarled, forgiving claw of a cherry tree,
then “the run” an arm’s-length reach from the bad man’s gate—
will the cops nab him this time—as they chase him half-naked down the alley?
Done! Now, flopping near the deep and pale purple iris bed
their weary mother will tend—soon as she returns from work,
pulls off her brown shoes, sighs, strokes the neighborhood tom cat,
who has straggled up to her slanted stoop, just like me,
wearing a mouse-eating grin.
I could go on, but The Muses might be listening.
They are sophisticates. Ashamed of her, with her
faded housedress, her chin wart, her birdbath, her straight path
to the trash bin of what might have been,
her shabbily asphalt-shingled house, ringed
by cheap perfume-blending, I-beam-smelting, can-lid stamping factories.
They are her fair-weather daughters,
flinging derision as they toss their glittery manes,
even as Mnemosyne rakes her silvery hair,
reaches out a steady hand,
fine tunes her radio’s scratchy sound,
looks skyward for a good, hard rain.
Barbara Hobbie is a freelance community journalist concentrating on not-for-profit organizations. She resides in the former East Germany. Her poems have appeared in Avant Garde, The Granite Review, Chicago Journalism Review and The Anthology of New England Writers.
The White Bicycle
by Paula Bohince
Chained to a fence …
by Paula Bohince
Chained to a fence
in Paris, it suffers all winter the skinny
sleet, a white dog
in sad weather. Imagine the saucers
of such a dog’s eyes; its deflated
wheels were worrisome that way, the bike
all bones, leaning soulfully,
becoming pure ghost. Where had its rider
gone? And why?
Wandering, I became proprietary,
glimpsed it again in the flea
market earrings, those pearly twins
from the forties. I couldn’t afford
the bad luck of their origin; the woman
who wore them is dead.
I passed murals celebrating
the Occupation’s end. Girls on bikes
in the mid-century style: skirts blown, hair
wind-caught. World breathless.
Just yesterday, a soldier pedaled past
on his Schwinn, his girlfriend
perched on the handlebars, clasping his neck,
waving to everyone they were passing.
He sang, troubadour, to her.
The white bicycle persisted,
the swanned Os of its fenders, mated
for life. Like good food, poor fool,
the booted, on foot.
I sang, Who could leave behind
a thing so fine? I sang my swell song
to a doll or a gal, in the forties’ style.
Sailing anthem to keep up
the boys’ spirits, You’ve got an angel
back home, remember.
The white bicycle became a brassiere, hitched
to a bedpost, then two Shasta daisies
in a glass on the table. Dogged and weary,
as if it had been here, like the moon’s
reflection on water, or war,
or beauty, forever.
Paula Bohince is the author of two poetry collections, both from Sarabande Books: Incident at the Edge of Bayonet Woods (2008) and The Children (forthcoming, 2012).
Yiu Ming Cheung
by Ashley Chow
You shred daikon in winter, buckets …
by Ashley Chow
You shred daikon in winter, buckets
of crisp white you stirred with rice flour
and dried shrimp, every year preparing
turnip cake for the spring festival.
A good wife, a good mother, you followed
your husband to Thailand, even though
you both couldn’t read the street signs
and on hot days your children would wash
in the city river, you followed him from Bangkok
to Hong Kong, you followed him through bankruptcy,
the night markets in Mong Kok, the nylon factory,
and then one afternoon you shut your eyes.
Maybe you expected a bodhisattva to meet you,
or an Arabian horse, but I only know the nights
when cockroaches chewed at my mother’s skin,
finding the fingers she had forgotten to scrub.
You would never see Edmonton, the snow packed
roads, the salty cars, your husband floundering
in the bath tub, living with cancer, his lungs
trying to exhale the words he had learned each week:
disparate, irrupt, patina, perdurable . . .
Sundays you steeped laundry in water,
the detergent cracking your palms, cuticles
bleeding. Where is the honey in this brick?
Ashley Chow grew up in New Hampshire. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in New York Quarterly, Poetry International, and Crab Creek Review. She is a recipient of a 2011 Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship to Timor-Leste.