Hot from the Press
Here it is! I feel I should be giving out cigars/red eggs for the occasion.
Poetry Meme Day #1
I was tagged in a 5-poems-over-5-days meme on Facebook, so I thought I would reproduce the posts here, complete with the intended line indents and breaks.
On Day #1, I pick “Huang He” from my [forthcoming] collection, AND OTHER RIVERS. Because it's one of the first poems (definitely first five, appropriate in this 5 day challenge) I wrote. I like it for how raw it sounds in my ear.
HUANG HE
We learned about the river today.
Huang He, how it carves a long, fluid line
through the earth.
While I waited,
I practised telling you
how the river flowed past its banks
sometimes. Too many times.
How they lined it with stone
after too many got lost. Led away
by the river’s cold hands.
I would tell you how the water
whipped through man-made forts.
How villagers fed it incense, live cattle,
their daughters.
One each year.
Sent out in a raft of silk.
Gold-chained.
Red-veiled. Dowry slippers
at their feet. I wanted to ask,
Would you?
So while you bathed,
I waited
for you to step out
smelling of something sweet,
a flower I didn’t know the name of.
I sat, listening to the tap run.
The steady tick of
water
drumming the floor.
And Other Rivers
And Other Rivers, Flight, cover
A taste...
Flight
There are many ways to tame a bird
without first killing it.
Wing clipping, an old favourite. Leather ropes, coiled
around the reptilian ankle. Then there are leg-irons
the size of women’s rings Or, to go back to basics, twine.
The type they take birds to market with at the back of a scooter.
Strung feet up, eyes wide, wing bones sinking to the earth.
And from elsewhere, Samsui and After Word.
This is happening
On June 7, I'll be reading at VERSO's final event of the season with the beautiful folks from Versal. Details here!