Hot News: Featured Poet in hedgerow

My Dear Friends:

I'm happy to share the good news that I'm one of the four featured poets/artists in the Poet / Artist Spotlight section of hedgerow: a journal of small poems. Below are my featured haibun and tanka prose:

Silence of Abandonment

running to her

on the path of my dream --

her black cat

wanders back and forth

along the white fence

The last time we communicated with each other was her parting words printed in a bold, black type on the A4 paper under her wedding ring: feed the cat.

A Short Story about Love

at her window

two shadows entwine

in one embrace ...

like vampires sucking blood

from my memories

Sitting at my desk, swathed in darkness, I use the new telescope to zoom in on them – watch her rise and fall as the man guides her slow circular movements. His hands slide up from her hips to her breasts, continue to her shoulders, altering her rhythm, pulling her down onto him...

I open the drawer, take out a pocket knife, rush down to the basement parking lot, and find his piercing red Jaguar. Crouching, I plunge the tip of the knife into one of his tires with climactic fierceness; then I stab and I stab...the second, third, and fourth.

I rip out

each page of our life

this sultry night

the dream soaks my bed

with her moaning

Confession of a Photography Addict

Mary invites me over to her place for an interview. She has her strands dyed every color of the rainbow, and looks much younger than she is. On the wall facing the window, she tacks up a giant photo of herself, composed of many smaller pictures. After taking a sip of iced tea, she start talking in an unusually deep, husky voice, "I've spent ten years on a shrink's couch, but I still hear him through the wall whispering to me. Every day when I get up and look in the bedroom mirror, I see that man staring back at me. I want him carved off my face..."

Father's Day

blanked out on her calendar

morning chill

My First Canada Day

Sitting in my ESL teacher's living room with its wall-to-wall Persian rugs, I am enveloped by family stories and jokes. Although half the time I can only guess what's going on, I put a smile on my face and keep saying Yes, No, and I see in the right places. All of a sudden, a shriek breaks our laughter. My teacher's sons rush to the door. Slowly, we file out of the house toward the manicured front yard.

rainbow flowers

blooming in the night sky

my immigrant dream

(Note: ESL stands for English as a Second Language)

Exiled

Often, I yearn for things not lost; I go to sleep in Taipei, but wake up at midnight in Ajax. Like a black widow, loneliness wraps itself around my mind, spins a cocoon, and then squeezes until it stops moving.

early morning stillness ...

my heart wandering about

as in a haze

ALIENATION

At daybreak, I wake up from a recurring dream: I ride the Mongol horse through the snowy fields deeper into the unknown world of one color.

a bowl of congee

next to a cup of coffee...

exile and after

Can I find out now what A thought of me? Why did L stand before I, blocking the sky on Canada Day? And what did E want to be added to? At last…will my being mean anything for N and the rest of the word?


Note: Below are some of my well-received haiku and tanka published in hedgerow:

first spring
the east wind carries
the smell of home
(for new immigrants)

hedgerow, 28, 2015

tenth year in exile...
tinge of green on the maple
in my front yard

hedgerow, 28, 2015

for a week
no one but the wind
comes to call ...
the flames of self-doubt
envelop my body

hedgerow, 24, 2015

held by her words
You're a useless poet ...
I walk out,
slamming the door
behind my old self

hedgerow, 24, 2015

moving day ...
in her throwaway pile
my first chapbook

hedgerow, 23, 2015

a sea of blue uniforms
under the New York sun
a black man
holding up a placard
that reads I can't breathe
(for Eric Garner)

hedgerow, 22, 2015

at the cliff's edge
I wait
for the cold moon

hedgerow, 21, 2015