Nijuin Renga

My friend Andrew invited me to write an "autumn nijuin renga."

Here's my opening verse:

autumn foliage scorches
the horizon line forest
fires in Esperanza

the aging antiquities dealer
drops the price on his idol

of Shiva Nataraja, sold
to the Dallas art museum,

for 2.4 million to guarantee
the collector’s early

retirement – Chola bronze
buried deep within a well

bears the scars of rope
used to lower the god

down a tunnel to safety
ducking all problems

of patrimony in other
incarnations Shiva as

phallus or lingam

the curator says of
ananda tandava

the dance of bliss –
few people will ever

become buddhas or bodhisattvas

it’s thru the deity that every-
day people enter

the supernatural world
one leg raised in the cosmic dance

freedom from the wheel of incarnation
one leg stamping out illusion

in his hair the holy Ganges
the full moon planets & stars

Brassica Chinensis

at the National Palace Museum
an hour before closing
the galleries are full

with visitors who’ve come
to view preserved plastrons
under glass, turtle shells

incised with oracle
markings – I ask my guide
what must not be missed

the jade cabbage,
        she utters

nature mort
two red katydids rest
on a three-inch tall

bok choy hewn
from a single piece
of stone, material

revered among artists
for its quality
of transparency

the young concubine
who surrendered the nephrite
carving – symbol of

a father’s blessing to
a favorite child –
passed over

to increase the virtue
of an elder sister’s
marriage dowry

Sacred Dice

As a student at B.U., I started out in the CORE Humanities program where I met this kid. Anthony Cristofani. I always noticed the other kids from California, as most of us were homesick, dressed and talked differently, and seemed at least somewhat disgruntled and out of our element, except for Anthony. After B.U., he writes in our alumni mag, he went on a "Bonnie & Clyde"-style crime spree and went to prison for three years where he learned French and how to play guitar. Now he's in the band Sacred Dice with his brother Louis, a jazz pianist. Their sound? Check out their website or buy their album - "True Light" plays on the splash page and has some guitar hooks like U2.

Taha Muhammad Ali at the Dodge

The Dodge Festival has just posted this Quicktime video of Taha Muhammad Ali and Peter Cole reading Taha's poem Revenge. Taha was one of the highlights of this year's Dodge Fest for me - an amazing voice in international poetry.

a day without an immigrant
            May 1, 2006

in Dallas eating out meant
Chinese not the corner

taqueria, last week
a finger was served

up in Friday’s burger
never would have happened

if the worker had been a Spic
bring back those Mexicans!

a co-worker quips
how a regular boycott

would shorten his morning
commute, at the train

stop two brown-skinned men
dressed in painters’ pants and

bleached cotton tees stand
out in a sea of white faces

speaking Spanish at
the pass machine they

want to purchase
one-way trips spend

only a dollar fifty

I try to explain the difference
between fares, that there is

only one roundtrip fee
to back where you came from

si´, I know but a dollar fifty
is a lot of money he says

in English when I can’t
understand ¬ it’s the transit

police I’m worried about
busting these two guys for

shortchanging a faulty system
when the train pulls up

I climb aboard to my seat
see them start again

realizing too late, I might
have paid their passage

Blossoms from a Japanese Garden

I find the gutted tome resting
on a crowded shelf between

children’s books, next to
bins of printed ephemera

the illuminated pages have
been torn out clean

sheet by sheet, leaving
only a crumbling spine

a handful of poems
a table of contents,

dissatisfied, I thumb thru
stacks, find each blossom

plastic-wrapped and marked
up to twelve dollars a page

my neighbor’s bamboo

the fadeless flowers

what they saw in the moon

watercolor sketches
by unknown artists

match each art plate
in the visual index,

the moniker Fennollosa
as foreign in these parts

as the names of Kazuko
Jiro, or Taro – characters

from the simple tales that
the curator’s wife put down

in poorly rhymed verse

at cashout I argue with
the proprietor for the book

as art object, cultural document,

flowers to be studied together
in the garden of the reader

Notes on Desikachar's "Health, Healing & Beyond"

"When we encounter problems, the counsel of someone who has mastered similar problems can be of great help." - Patanjali

Krishnamarcharya traveled into Tibet to study at the Ramamohan Ashrama which was basically a cave in the mountain. During his studies, he ate fruit given to him by the guru. At the end of his studies, payment was due to his teacher. A student must always pay what is asked, or a debt is incurred, breaking the holy chain of knowledge. The guru asked of Krishnamacharya that he "take a wife, raise children, and be a teacher of Yoga."

Anniversary Poem

at my refuge vow ceremony
my instructor slips me
a white envelope that

I promptly forget about
caught up in the ritual
of rice toss and hair cut

anxiety of arriving to greet
the guru without a white kata,
the German girl rechristianed

Pema offers me her own
and its her heart I really want
but instead I must live with

“liberatress of the Buddha”

inside the card
three square sheets
of recycled paper

stamped with gold
& brushed with orange
I recognize them from

the Chinese grocery store -
the aisle my father refused
to travel down, the path

he would not talk about

seven years later,
I rediscover Donna’s note
buried in a stack of correspondence

welcome, dharma sister,
welcome she says again
and I see now the gift

three squares for three jewels
to set fire today to the past
& all of its attachments

corps de ballet

within a wooden frame
a sequence of lobsters scuttle

from kitchen to parlor
trading the ocean’s deeps
for the depths of a smackman’s p(l)ot

lured by the perfume
of herring & live bait

lobstermen haul
boxes aboard
throwing star
fish scattered in
all directions
undersized specimens rejected
at the weigh-in

trapped in beaded necklaces
and netted skirts
pincers rubber banded
tight the taping
of a ballerina’s feet
measured lengths of silk cord
wrapping

a line of boiled red crustaceans swimmerets spread

teasing the diner towards another course

A Pantry Ballet for Jacques Offenbach, 1942

(click on image to enlarge text)

Akshobya*

In Yehlio, I contemplate a jagged scar
running across the narrow neck

of Queen’s Head Rock,
read in the visitor’s guide

of a vandal’s foiled plot to
saw through earth to sell

an ancient landmark
on the antiquities market

scarred stone hardly bears
her noble profile, years from now

to fall like Franconia’s
old man in the mountain,

disappeared in a landslide
of rock, a tale of Akshobya,

swaddled in blankets
throat slit with diamond saw

sledge-hammered crown
of the Buddha stolen

from Shentong Monastery’s
Four Gate Pagoda, five years later

bought on the black market
by devotees and donated

to the head of the Dharma Drum
order Master Sheng-yen returns

the Buddha to the People’s Republic
in a ceremony that makes headlines

on both sides of the Taiwan Strait



* Sanskrit for “imperturbable.”

Dancing Tongue at the Undermain

Dancing Tongue

Sometimes I lose track of my work and discover it later.

American Born Chinese

Gene Yang's graphic novel on growing up ABC was recently nominated for a National Book Award!

Making some headway wrapping up old projects. Four interviews with writers have recently found homes. Rain Taxi will be publishing my interview with Steve Bradbury, discussing his new book of translations of Shang Qin poems, and a piece with Ben Fountain, author of Brief Encounters with Che Guevara. Eclectica will publish my interview with prose writer Evelina Galang in January. And Trip Master Monkey just took a piece I wrote on the work of Mong Lan ages ago.

                         SOLD OUT

The importance of good translation

I've been a fan of Eileen Chang's work, ever since I read her short stories in a contemporary Chinese women's lit class at B.U. So when I found her book Naked Earth (1960s Hong Kong Union Press edition) in a used record/bookstore on Yongkang Street in Taipei, I snapped it up. In getting around to finally skimming the book, my mind stumbles on phrases like

Her skin had the bluish pale translucency of fresh-peeled lichee flesh and her eyes were wide splits in the ripe fruit showing the moistened lacquered surface of the purplish black seed within.

I think I am going to have to postpone reading Naked Earth until I can find a better translation.

WordSpace at Paperbacks Plus

WordSpace is hosting its fall Next-on-Deck: Poets in the Universities reading at Paperbacks Plus on Friday, November 3, at 7 p.m. We are excited to offer a reading with poets Renee Rossi, Susan Briante, and Karen X. Please help spread the word about this upcoming reading!

About the poets:
Renee Rossi is currently pursuing an MFA at Vermont College and works part-time as an otolaryngologist. Her poems have appeared in Ilyas Honey and the anthology Body Language. The Dallas Poets Community awarded Renee with its second place prize in its 2005 National Poetry Competition.

Susan Briante is Assisant Professor of English at the University of Texas at Dallas and is currently working on completing her doctoral dissertation for the University of Texas at Austin. Her first poetry collection, Pioneers in the Study of Motion, will be published in 2007 from Ahsahta Press. Her poems have appeared in TriQuarterly, New American Writing, Indiana Review, Chain and Sentence among many others.

Karen X is a veteran performer of punk rock, poetry, producer of avant-garde events. The Dallas Poets Index describes her as "the neo-beat queen of the East Dallas poetry scene." After 10 years in Austin as a music writer for The Austin Sun, she moved to Dallas and began writing poetry. Allen Ginsberg invited her to study as a Poetics Apprentice at the Naropa Institute in 1980. As a special friend of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, she co-produced Paris Records recordings of Anne Waldman, Robert Creeley, and Ginsberg. Her shouting poetics band The Panics, with Les Michaels, performed on the same bill as Flipper, Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, and John Cale. She has toured solo with Frank Black and Reverend Horton Heat with ambient music provided by Ministry. Karen has performed at Caravan of Dreams and Sita di Limur's Starck Club with Karen Finley and Laney Yarber, traveled to the Assiniboine Reservation in northern Montana to perform with Townes Van Zandt and Roxy Gordon. She has also performed at the Austin International Poetry Festival and in 1994 she was invited to read at Lollapollaza Music Festival. Karen is currently a creative writing istructor at Brookhaven Community College. She has read and lectured at colleges and universities around the country.

NEXT-ON-DECK: Writers in the Universities
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3
PAPERBACKS PLUS
6115 LA VISTA (Dallas, Texas)
FREE/DONATION
7:00 P.M.
214-827-4860

Great article in today's NY Times on Viggo Mortenson's Perceval Press based out of So Cal.

While researching lobsters this morning, I came across Trevor Carson's blog. Trevor is author of The Secret Life of Lobsters. I've also been reading about the use of spoons as percussion instruments. Lobsters and spoons both figure prominently into Cornell's Pantry Ballet.