The Twenty-Fourth of May

Today, I ordered my usual -
a medium, iced latte.

I do my routine at the coffee shop:
order, wait, and pick up my drink,
The same man hands it to me, with
his usual golden, circle-framed glasses,
and leather wrist watch.
Walk over to
the little table where
customer's help themselves,
and get a straw.
Stab black counter until
yellow plastic penetrates the
paper covering.
Put it in the drink as I walk out,
pushing the door with my left shoulder
instead of my hands.

The latte tastes different today,
Less milky,
harder to
swallow - bitter.
Or maybe that's just me, today.
Because of you
things are
harder to swallow -
bitter.

Confirmation of Submissions

HeartWood Literary Magazine

The New Yorker

Matador Review

The Small Things

Not washing my face in the morning or night,

Brushing my teeth in thirty seconds, or not at all,

Staying on the ground after a fall,

Skipping a meal, or having a bite.

Sitting in my room for hours without light,

Quietly thudding my head against the wall,

Watching the phone screen turn black when there’s a call,

There’s no sorrier sight.

Things like these go unnoticed,

But I do want people to see.

Do say so please, if you can tell me why.

Because for years I have waited,

But those close to me,

Won’t understand when I say goodbye.

Traumatic Childhood

Their feuds kept her up at night,

And to cope she’d say things were alright.

That was until one day

She saw father’s decay

And on mother’s face: pure delight.

Morning Quiet

She wakes up to pale light and peace,

Hazy head and brown hair with light grease.

But count to three,

And recall, will she,

The car crash left her son deceased.

Rusty Bird

Rusty bird,
Coarse hinges and feathers well tarnished,
He adds some oil and
Resumes flight.

This is the life of Rusty bird.
Fly, Fly until wings become too weighted
with turbulent conversations and
one too many misdeeds, Repair the latest drawbacks, and
Continue flying.

He knows not which way to go, but he needs not know,
for underneath that oil-drenched heart of his,
he knows that forwards is the most important direction.

Sometimes, Rusty bird takes longer pitstops than usual.
Sometimes, Rusty bird doesn't fly for a very long time.
Sometimes,
              Rusty bird does not want to keep flying.

In these stagnant periods, Rusty bird's wings are heavier that he can bear,
and bare are the stems of his feathers, wearily slicing through the air,
barely able to lift his pitiful, discoloured mass.

In these moments of pause, Rusty bird contemplate his purpose.
Will there ever be a destination? Must Rusty bird live his life, constantly
scraping off the ever-growing abundance of rust on his little body? What if Rusty bird
stopped doing so? What would happen then?

And after days, sometimes weeks, - and on several occasions - years, when Rusty bird finds an undisturbed shoe box and shuts his metal eyes one last time,
he reminisces about flying.

The liberation of soaring, the empowerment that came with each beat of his wings, the beauty of flying forwards into a new unknown...

This newfound energy pulsates through his crumbling frame.

He pours oil over his corroded heart, his weighted wings, and his bare feathers,
and as it seeps through the cracks and flayed layers,
Rusty bird flies again.

Vice of a Savage Boy

Enveloped in virtue
and an illusion of order,
it sits unmoving - but alert-, and hunched over,
ready to smother his facade.

Cracking its neck like the hands on a clock,
in fading patience, its clammy palms
clench matted red hair slicked in
oil of berserk.

Kill the pig.

Crouching, crawling, lurking tiger,
unmoving, save for shifting blue eyes.
It too shifts its sunken eyes,
but its boney body twitches violently
with bloodlust.

Cut her throat.

Gleeful and seething with
sadistic brutality.
It curls its branch fingers into tight fists
and thrusts downwards at the pig's throat,
at the last of his facade.

Spill her blood.

Cackling now, it dances
around the bonfire of primeval desires.
Clammy hands now drenched in swine blood,
he succumbs to savagery.

"Sensations of Savagery" (Found Poem from William Golding's Lord of the Flies, chapters 1-3)

Salt water on his lips,

Green bath of heat
Greasy decaying coco-nuts
with plums, fruit and saplings
Soil, palm trees, his blood through the air

Drawn first by dark green, warmer than blood.

The heat is fierce, sweating and gasping.

The pain of peeling sunburn over flush pink flesh.

Reassurance dripping from faces onto,

the cold, criss-cross pattern of dried palm trees.

Every so many sweets, pounds and pounds and pounds.
And now, gorging fruit in the forest;
The promise of meat, talking only about pig pig pig.
Ripe fruit. Hunt, hunted. Thirst, fresh water.
An unsatisfying meal, all are fed up.

The blow of laughter diminished
Giggles scattered
Silent.
Muttered, gasped fearfully
Storm of tumult arose.

So much open forest,
Darkness under the trees,
A glimpse of the spread sea.
The water was a thin bow-stave, endless.
We may stay here til we die.

Do Seek Their Meat From God

Hush, hush,
Look.
The forest and its spirits intertwine,
The living die, get eaten or rot,
And in death blossoms fuel for creation
As nutrition or foundation.
Prey and predator, favour ebbs relentlessly
As He proclaims.

Hush, hush,
Feel.
Pinpricks of something foreign,
Contaminating the web,
The breach creates cracks,
And He watches as the cracks
become crevices
become fissures.
Hunger and savagery, a byproduct of
alien integration into
His structure.

Hush, hush,
Taste.
What He has put on our tongues,
Be it blood and flesh of our kill,
Or spit and bland air.
We, of the broken cycle,
do not complain as we live
day by day
in inescapable acceptance
of His will.

Writer's Fest, Diffusing Rose Tea, and Discomfort

     Today I went to the New Shoots event of the Vancouver Writer's Fest. The hour was interesting, listening to literary works by Jeff Steudel - a teacher from Gladstone -, two grade twelve Gladstone students both named Sarah, and Evelyn Lau.

      All of the works presented today played in my mind as if I were the speakers, seeing from their eyes and reliving their memories. It was quite an experience, and I felt the urge to write poetry afterwards, hoping that I could produce something that would submerge others into another world, as the poems and short stories did for me today.


      The first to speak at the podium, Jeff Steudel, presented a poem - a love letter, in his words - to his father. I take this as a sign that I should read more, as I could not understand much of what he said, both to not knowing what words came out of his mouth, and being unable to focus. A tad bit shameful... but what I do recall was him talking about how amazing he thought his father was, for being stung on the eye, by bees whose hive they cut down for the honey, and being completely unfazed by it. He described how his father said they would have a fine batch of honey this time around. The scene was sweet, much like the honey they would have, I quite liked that.

      The first Sarah's poem of rose tea was the easiest to visualize personally. As she spoke about diffusing rose tea, how she could not read the German on the package it came in, how that meant she put too much in a cup, and how it was good to drink with $4.99 Lipton Green Tea, I could see the foreign words and taste the warm liquid. Tea, particularly green, and earl grey, is something I find calming and soothing. It makes those seconds, when I taste the water with the flavour of those leaves, a little slower, a little better. Her poem made me feel the same way.

     The second Sarah presented a short story, one about her grandpa and her careful tread into his well hidden backstory of an orphanage he once lived in. Listening to this was fun, as she incorporated Cantonese words into the story, as I did for a poem I wrote a while ago. It was very clear, the setting her and her grandpa were in, the cold outdoors and darkness approaching.

     Finally, Evelyn Lau came to the podium and presented a poem that started off innocent, into something considerably disturbing. While the imagery of Chinatown and the grandmas that thought little of a small child, to the stack of oranges -which a few cents could pay a pound for-, was vivid, the neutral scenes in my mind were disrupted by what she spoke of next. How a "bum" circling around the store where her parents were grocery shopping, kept touching her under her skirt, between her adolescent legs with his grimy hands, over and over again. I was uncomfortable in my seat, despite being dressed in skinny jeans and a knee length jacket all zipped up. I cannot say I particularly liked her piece, simply based on the discomfort I felt when she spoke of how she thought of it as almost validating, as if she were the guardian to her parents oblivious to the situation. This does not mean I think it was poorly written, in fact, this means the exact opposite.


     It was an interesting experience, one filled with emotions that ranged from very good to disturbing. I am anticipating the poetry unit, hoping that I too can write something that moves others the way today's works moved me. I want to submerge others into a world I create with deliberate strokes of my pen, and I want them to remember that feeling or scene that emerges in their head when they hear what I write. For now though, I have chemistry and art homework awaiting my attention.

Autumn Meets a Water Body

Fragile flakes of gold,

Floating atop crystalline

Transparent cyan.

_____

     As I was walking by this, I had a feeling of, "What a beautiful occurrence, despite the simplicity of plain, drying leaves to fall into the fountain next to the tree it once grew on".  I had to turn back, as with every step, I thought, "Even if this turns out to be a plain image, I will not forget what I felt when I viewed this happening, that most would not bat an eyelash at".

     I wonder now if something like this is important, if seeing the beauty - or perhaps, desperately (?), foolishly(?) searching for what can be "beautiful" of common occurrences- matters, or will matter. Cézanne saw what other did not, in apples. He romanticized, worshipped, adored, loved these fruits (that have been more expensive to buy in bulk lately at Costco). He painted the common fruit in various lighting and settings, admiring the lush reds fade into ambers. Maybe we say this man understood a bit more than others. That he understood the beauty of things we take for granted in life, but do we really mean it? Somewhere inside, we also think, "They are but fruit, nutritious, sweet, crunchy too sometimes, but nothing more, nothing less".  I wonder if those golden leaves in the neighbourhood fountains matter. Of course they don't. But... they do.