190. To the pregnant woman

To the pregnant woman that
missed the
Grand River Transit
bus 7B to Fairview
Park:

I didn't realize you
just missed the
bus I just
left:

by the time I
realized, you were
running after it,
desperate:
did the driver not
realize either?

your dark skin
glistening in the
hot summer air,
late for an interview
or from one?

I wanted to offer a
ride, I thought as I
already started back to my
apartment, and you
were already walking
to the next
stop.

Stay put, I want to
say - the next bus
will be
by in a few
minutes - (I
check this later,
for my own
conscience)

I want to tell you
this,
too -

but I was tired and
sweaty and
wanted to
get home
myself -

selfish or just
a missed
opportunity, I
wondered, and
still
do;
with a
twinge of
regret and guilt
as I write this,
hoping.

August 21, 2018
Waterloo, ON

175. Cash or Debit

Time is a shameless
measure:
no returns and
no
exchanges:
final
sale.

Like a
holiday tape wrapping
gift
by
gift,
the holly pattern
always

Sitting on a shelf,
observing
the darkness
of
neglect

A fate
to
pity, of
senseless
indifference

or perhaps to
covet,
eternal and
proudly
beyond,
spinning mutely

We cannot see its
end,
only –
think we
do:

cut short,
it
proceeds –
old gifts and
memories
remain;
undying,
unreturned,
dust-collecting and
sitting unblinking,
unremembering

172. Meninas

Las Meninas, Diego Velázquez (1656)

Museo del Prado, Madrid

Slanted
sits the
artwork: physical
body hidden
in a
temperature-controlled
vault-laboratory
hybrid thing;
exhumed to the present day,
mounted and dissected,
eyes observing,
dissecting;
essays
hum;
editors scramble furiously on the
Wikipedia
page...

Backing away,
curtain falls
as the
chamberlain
clears the exit

Two girls awkwardly caught
half-sentence in
curtsies, well
one –
the other still
unawares,
el búcaro outstretched
from her imploring
arms, fingers of
one curled in
mid-
persuasion

Despite her mourning
garb
the
guardian chatters
animatedly with the
guard, name
lost to
exclusive seats of
history

mumbling,
bumbling,
buzzing mutely:
as Two imported dwarves
form spectacle, one
obviously teasing the
peeved dog,
the other remarkably
solemn,
questioning.

Nineteen years and one
wife
separate the uncle from his
niece,
her arm tucked
protectively around
his?

The artist
rests: self-
portrait,
photograph?
Paint drops speckle his
boots in
real
time

Time ticks:
ribbons like
captive
wildflower
flare on the
alabaster plains;
ethereal, the
five-year-old
serenely gazes into
eternity

Bent knees
hover expectantly,
silk rustling, mute

Centrepiece, she
stands:
the business
frozen, betraying the
Purpose;
yet faces glisten,
inquiring,
else incoherent
of the
Moment:

The high
green-brown
panels silently
concur,
stolid,
enigmatic,
slumbering with the
weight of
centuries

Emptied,
its physical forbearer since perished,
imagination and
interpretation can only resurrect

Quiet,
the
noon
buzzes…

169. The Sidewalk Restaurant

Mapo Tofu (麻婆豆腐)

Image Source:
http://www.dianshu119.com/index.php?doc-view-881.html

Cheery chatter,
Mandarin,
surrounds like fumes;
we are
no longer
alone

cigarette smoke
deafens

the air conditioner
whirs,
green Tsingtao
bottles
glimmer,
translucent and
half-drunk

The noisy little
toddler
reaches for his
distracted 爸爸’s
tempting beer, reaches
to his lips

caught
(nearly too late), he is
smartly
rebuked

watching, I smile a
little

the 麻婆豆腐
is excellent

167. 天雅古玩城

Tianya Antiques City, Beijing, China

Image source: Sina

A strangest thing indeed:
round dishes on the roof;
the visitors, like ants,
all enter/leave the feast…

Escalators deceptively slow,
quicken
pace
excitedly as the shop-front
store owners
come to life as
visitors step upon their
domain

Smoke

fills the halls;
NO SMOKING sings
not to be seen
here

Teenagers,
arrogant old
women, and
what appear to be
street urchins also
man these
gates;
well-dressed,
well-versed
suited middle-aged
men and women, and the
exotic, distrustful
eyes of the
Uyghur:

Children eat rice
at the lacquer tables
as their parents
haggle
or discover yet another
childhood
acquaintance –

Some halls are filled
with more
idle
smoke
than others…

At the busiest:
count the tiny
diamonds
lining the precious
green jade
leaflets, glistening in
the
caged
light;
semiprecious stones
set in
much-handled
wedding bands –

How can we know
each
detail?
Each fold of
each leaf?

The grandiose:
purple cut agate a
basketball-player
tall;
jade and marble
slates,
cute in with
intricate tree-leaves,
lined with detailed lines and
anatomically impossible
people larger than the
pagodas on the
shining, speckled,
lithe green
mountains

Tea sets of
smooth
clay of
subtly different shades
of roam chocolate
and caramel feel
sandy to the
touch;
gold Bodhisattvas and
Buddhas line
shelves;
antique, or
not

Fragrant medicinal
wood,
cut
into
small
squares,
promise remedies:
Impossibly smoothed wood
create chairs
exquisitely painful
to sit
upon
(no wonder the
Emperors had
such bad
headaches)

People-sized plates
still sprinkle the
building top like
ribbons, red and
gleaming like a
kindergartner’s
First Day present;
gilt, the buttons
noon read, sprinkled
on the silver
elevators…

166. Princesses and Trashcans

Unborn embryos
gestate
in my head…

a poem,
I once
read?

My mother
checked out a
book from the
library:
portraits of women;

in poetry
(I secretly
read it
too)
things 10-year-olds
shouldn’t know:

I was
gripped:
it was horrifyingly
tasty

words.
images.

Was it all a dream?

I.
Witch doctor in
hot
Brazil,
summer heat
twirling the
plastic plug-in
fan

treatises on using
recycled fetuses
as
lotion,
teen mothers &
satin skin:
“semen is the best
moisturizer”…
(I didn’t know what
that word meant
then)

crony old
fingers dance,
translucent skin
framing her flaming
red cuticles
on the turquoise
counter

Bidonville…
“Eu chorei, perdi a paz…”
Portuguese flits through the
metal grille of the
portable radio,
yellow as
banana,
sound tinny and flat
like
botox)

II.
A mother trails the
blood of her miscarried
baby,
red on the
Michigan
snow

Poems on a
poem;
strange how one can
create in a
created universe,
it’s all very
meta,
isn’t it?

Little babies,
trapped in lotion,
loss painted
red on the snow:
these things will
stick within a
kid, or
would they

150. Com’è bello!

Unassuming,
silently presuming –
Two arachnids
tranquilly enslumbered:

Victim huntress,
paused the murderesses;
gentle yearning,
mute the Mother doting:

Golden doubles,
resting, still as marble:
Eight-fold digits
still and softly sun-gilt.

Se il destassi?

In the noontime daybeams
Venetian spun,
Gemini lay, Roman.

146. 端午节

Triangles,
banana leaves
wrapped tight
around the
rice and
crunchy egg
yolk:

Drawing no initial parallels
with the
colouring books I
scribbled in as a
child
while
the teams of
rowers
plunged their oars
into the
dragon-mirrored
waters –

Ma
tells me
a poet once
drowned out of
the misery of
exile

and that villagers
filled the lake
with these
triangles
out of
sympathy –

the fish kept away
and the body was
saved;

And on this
strange-appointed
day
I ponder,
perhaps too
much of
such tales.

139. Grandma’s

Dust is everywhere;
so is dog hair, cat hair, granny hair.
Old monochromatic photographs,
black and white, rest beside giraffes;
dollar-store dolphins on the mantle
complete the odd ensemble.

Orotund, magnanimous reminders
of a foreign past of hers
finds stasis in this irony:
grandiose relics in harmony
with cheap trinkets,
purchased as tourists do from over-eager merchants.

As if to eradicate
longings for another place,
they are placed, souvenirs,
living with the present, ghosts, for fear
that memory is not enough, that
physical mementos are evermore more apt;

Rummaging through this
strange apartment, it is
odd to feel small
in the magnitude of
such frailty.

Everything here feels
disembodied and disconnected.
Stories of the “old country”
flit in and out of my
head as I finger aimlessly
though album leaves,
eyeing hopelessly
the digital clock on the
stainless steel
microwave.

I am almost powerless as I
realize I am in a shrine to
my past,
our past,
locked in a bygone
identity housed in
another which
makes even
less
sense.

I am trying to care, but
I am confused.

134. Cherub

Dearest one:
blankets spread,
scattered
on the bed,
legs splayed
at an unnaturally
natural
angle;

How many years
it has been
since we were
both young,
carefree –

could I wish
you would retain
the happinesses
only youth
affords
and that life
will be
kind
to
you

Cheeks flushed from
a day of
activity,
breathing slow and
deep, contented
oxygen filling each
breath –

Exuberance,
tempered by the quiet night;
plush dog
in tow,
I am at once
completely at
one
yet an
intruder all the
same

In such
imperfect repose
do we find the sweetest
joys –

105. A Record of Stock Characters

Everywhere I go,
there are people.
Little people, big people,
large people, small people.

I envision I am
taking them all in,
breathing their essence into my
brain,
bottling them up in
invisible, infinitely small
vials, for
reference.

I like to think that I could
pull one out, anytime:
but of course, there is the
modification, and tinkering.

It is all such strange and
interesting work.
There is just no place for them
yet, or
ever.

101. Rain

Cleanse the Earth, rain;
feed the parched crops,
the sunburned acres.

Drive the men and women home,
send them driving home in cars,
in buses,
running with newspapers
wrapped around their heads;
send them back to the ones they
love.

Wash away the scent of Wednesday night’s
perfume,
wash away everything, rain,
until there is simply the rhythmic
sound
of water dripping down the eaves
and blood coursing through my
spellbound veins.

98. Chocolate

Deep and dark;
bitter sweetness on my
eager tongue.
Soft and sensual;
little florets
bloom within my
captivated
mouth.

When all the children are asleep
and the evening’s work is
done:
how nice it is to sit in the
silent darkness,
thinking of nothing
doing nothing
but enjoying this sinful
morsel

in a moment’s
single, solitary
bliss;
alone and awake
in the dark hours,
only with a box of chocolates
and nothing else.

77. Training wheels

Training wheels come off today:
waiting, anticipation…
it’s pretty easy in fact;
Dad knows how.

Mom & Dad are supportive;
parking lot of an abandoned
workplace:
Saturdays are for
learning.

Fresh start, they say:
wobbling along on just
2 wheels:
the world is topsy-
turvy
now.

Fall this way,
fall that way:
eventually
we straighten out on our own
path;
then we are finally able to
ride circles
‘round our own parents;

but Mom & Dad
will always watch us
from the sidelines,
cheering, gasping, crying:
always supportive.

until the day
they cannot come to watch us anymore
and then even the wheels we have
come off

and we must learn
everything over
again

76. Small Town Woes

Small town charm,
Small town charm:
Little houses
In a row;
Small town charm,
Small town charm:
Aging couples
In the sun.

Small town joy,
Small town joy,
Baby girls and
Sunday school;
Small town joys,
Small town joys:
Halloween and
Harvest time.

Small town loves,
Small town loves:
Family and
First desire.
Small town love,
Small town love,
Neighbour’s tea
And potluck treats.

Small town woes;
Small town woes:
Silent days and
Empty nights.

Small town woes;
Small town woes:
Idle gossip,
scheming wives.

Small town woes;
Small town woes:
desperation,
suffocation.

Small town woes;
small town woes,
prejudice and
old routines.

small town woes;
small town woes:
disillusionment,
disappointment.

small town woes:
small town woes
peek beyond
the Cold Veneer –

Small town woes,
Small town woes.
small town woes:
small town woes.

68. 2:05 P.M.

This is my second time in the
human anatomy lab.

I am all alone this time;

I need some time to process
what we learned today –

Or maybe just time to come to terms
with death.
In high school
we did things with
sheep eyes, pig foetuses.
But a human: a donated
human body
could be me,
could be my own
mother.

Ah, death:
we become spare
parts,
donated
graciously to
labs, to Body Worlds,
to patients needing
organ transplants:

I held a brain in my hands today,
and I cried.
I cried
for the temporality of life,
for my own mortality.

All alone this time in the
human anatomy lab,
it is quiet, and
strange.
Preservatives fill my nose;
I am intoxicated with
formaldehyde.

Always alone,
after the crowds and lines have gone,
alone:
on a cold metal
foldable tray,
stuffed away in some
morgue, some cemetery, some lab;
and we become spare
parts,
and we cry,
for the temporality of life,
for our own mortality.

65. Oiseaux exotiques

4 slightly restless tourists,
all smiles          gaze around
curiously:
you can tell they are not lost,
but curious.

Aliens:
we do not know how far
they have come
to buy a cup of coffee
and donuts.

In one moment, they are
fascinating, strange
in their foreign movements,
odd costumes;
curiosity fades though
as they fly from sight,
though not from
mind.

59. Taboo

There are certain things
we are not allowed to say,
certain things
of which
we cannot speak.

I say a great many
things,

but certain things
I cannot, will not,
ever say.

These are the things
we carry in our heavy hearts,
staining the eggshell wall,
blurred with the dim,
half-hearted flicker
of a dusty lamp.

These are the things we whisper
to the deadened night,
when the children have gone to sleep
and the moonshine peaks through
the blinds

burdens,
guilt,
regrets,
secrets -

58. Homebound

I, my simple meals:
shared with birds perching at the
window.
Delicious fare, a fine wine;
there is Mozart in the
hall –

No,
I am watching the
dying afternoon,
diaphanous as
always,
watching the people scuttle
from place to place
on errands, playing,
loitering:

No –
I am lying on my
neatly composed bed,
languishing like some fatal
Lady of Shalott:

If there is such a thing as destiny
I would be persuaded,
knowing that some of us
are doomed to imprisonment, despair,
jailed in unrelenting
cells
while the rest are
smiling, dancing,
watching television
in the
downstairs den.

Evan Penny: Mask (1989)
Donald Forster Sculpture Park
Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Photographed by Hanneorla: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hanneorla/

53. Granted

It was just yesterday
you were a darling babe
in blue swaddling blankets,
who cried, yes,
but –
you were the sweetest,
littlest thing,
dearest.

What happened?
Everything now is,
“No, no, no!”
Everything is
uphill struggles, battles of
wills.

You are now a slightly larger
bundle of rebellion.
I hope I am raising you up well,
but it’s hard to tell:
I live with so much
guilt, dread, regret;
I must be screwing up.

Thank God
you are just my brother.
I hope your life
is easier than mine,
that you don’t endure
the things I
must.

But please, please, please
stop whining:
do your Goddamn
homework.