I talk to a UT Dallas humanities student in the latest issue of Reunion which can be ordered here.

I am a 2013 grant recipient for Community Supported Arts.

New poems up at Buddhist Poetry Review.

2013 New Year's Resolutions:
- start bicycling
- obtain a scooter license and scooter
- drive in Seattle
- work on book project on Taiwan
- write and publish 1 or 2 personal essays
- learn 5-10 new recipes
- go swimming 2-3 times a week
- pay off remaining student loan debt
- take a well-deserved vacation

The Ghosts of Green Island

A friend of a friend, Mr. Tsun, works for the thermal electric plant on Green Island and grew up on Ludao. He offered to take us for a tour of local sites - the lighthouse, the prison, and other places of interest. I immediately asked where the dead bodies were buried - of the political prisoners. He drove us to the access road of Swallow's Cave and we hiked in.

Past windswept trees felled by typhoon, along a dirt path.

Until we arrived at a small cemetery on a grassy hillside being grazed by dozens of wild goats.

As I shot photo after photo using my Hasselblad, the camera shutter jammed. I am not a superstitious person but had to question reality at that moment. Mr. Tsun said that when he was growing up, no one dared visit these places. But from the looks of the trash and debris, it would seem that the graveyard is now more heavily trafficked.

In the distance, Mr. Tsun pointed to Sparrow's Cave. "That's where they used to burn the dead bodies." When we went back the next day, my dad and I walked towards the outskirts of the cave, but he refused to go into the grotto. Later, I read in a book published on Green Island's historic sites that no bodies were ever burned in Swallow's Cave. This story is told for the sake of tourism. But the cave is a shelter for thousands of sparrows.

More Green Island

My dad and I rented electric bikes to tour Ludao. They are a step up from manual bicycles, and not quite as souped up as scooters. But they get the job done on small hills, no pedaling required. On one afternoon, we set out together to see what we could.

We rode along the perimeter of the island, where we encountered a couple of diving platforms. Snorkelers walk out to the end of the platforms and jump into the water.

We visited Guanyin Cave. Legend goes that a lost seafarer off the coast of Green Island was guided safely inland thru a strange light. He followed the light to the cave where he encountered a stalactite that resembled the Goddess of Mercy, Guanyin. The townspeople erected a shrine around the mineral deposit and enshrouded it in red. Later the cave was opened to give access to visitors.

The island is a place of great breath-taking beauty - from Cow's Head Rock to the ocean and mountain landscapes, it's a place that I would gladly visit again.

Green Island (Ludao)

From Matsu, we returned to Taipei for a few days before departing for Green Island, also known as Ludao (Lyudao), also known formerly as Fire-Burning Island. Upon deboarding the ferry and entering into the town of Nanliao, one of the first things you are greeted by is this sight:

Green Island is a place that's been transformed into a tourist site, due to its unspoiled white sand beaches and coral reefs, a haven for scuba divers and snorkelers. In recent times, the island has begun to capitalize on its darker history - the heritage of the Ludao Lodge where political prisoners were sentenced to hard labor under Martial Law.

Ludao Lodge is no more. The island still maintains one high-security prison that houses Taiwanese gangsters, but as for the Lodge that housed enemies of the government, all that remains are crumbling buildings, a memorial museum, and preserved historic spaces.

The main building itself is a panopticon, extending out in four different wings.

The spaces are haunting and eerie. After 1/2 an hour or so of taking pictures, I felt a bit unnerved, particularly, because I was the only person in the cavernous building.

I was haunted by the rooms of solitary confinement. And in one wing even discovered some padded cells that were windowless. I could not bring myself to enter.

Many things went down on Green Island. There are differing accounts of how many died and how. But it was a site of hard labor, torture, execution. We noticed that townspeople gave differing accounts from former prison staff. The exhibitions pull from the journals and writings of past prisoners who illustrate the experience of prison life at the Ludao Lodge.

Re-education was a large part of the experience, as was hard labor - such as breaking up coral reefs, and farming.

As we left the exhibition hall, my father remembered a childhood friend who's father was imprisoned on Green Island for suspected political activities. My father was too young to understand, but knew that his friend traveled once a month to visit his father, taking a 3-hour ferry from Taitung to Green Island. He always tried to imagine what that journey was like, and what Green Island was like. Upon seeing and understanding, he remembered his friend and broke into tears. His friend's father was imprisoned for nearly a decade until Martial Law was lifted. At that point he was sent home. He sold his land, put his affairs in order, divided up his property amongst his sons and died a year later. In my father's retelling, there is a lesson about love for one's family - what keeps one going, even through the darkest of times and what happens when we decide to let go.

Matsu Part II

Matsu (Beigan) is a fairly sleepy island. I wanted to see the island before the erection of the casino that's been approved by the government to increase tourism. Walking around downtown, I snapped some photos of a temple close to our hotel.

Inside the temple, I discovered a number of lovely box-like tableaus in the shadows of the central deity shrine. I have no sense of what tales these tableaus were illustrating but was fascinated nonetheless.

Across the street from the small temple, I noticed a Christian presence.

On our last morning in Matsu, I convinced my father to hire a taxi to see some of the local sites that we'd scouted the previous day on the bus loop. We went to Qiozhi Fishing Village, but also to a place that wasn't on the bus route, but that my father had mentioned. My dad was reticent about going - he felt the $600 NT cab ride negotiated by the hotel was not reasonable and wanted to strike up his own deal. So he hired a taxi to take us to Qiaozhi and the Beigan Tunnel.

The Beigan Tunnel was nothing like I pictured. You have to scuttle down some slippery rocks on a mountainside to enter inside the cave structure. I was told I would have 5 minutes to take pictures, of what I though would just be the exterior. But suddenly, the taxi driver was joining us on our adventure. He had never entered inside the Tunnel and my dad's charm did its work.

In retrospect, I wish I'd shot video or recorded sound. The light in the tunnel was too dark to make decent fotos. The tunnel was created by soldiers stationed in Matsu who hammered away at the mountain to carve the space where secret fleets of boats could be stored, alongside rations and supplies delivered to the island that were stored for later dissemination. We made it pretty far into the tunnel before turning back, though I did not see the statues that are supposedly inside the mountain that serve as monuments. My dad had a feeling the tide was coming in, and as we left, the ocean waters washed over our shoes. As we exited, I noticed the high and low tide signs in Chinese. We had neglected to read them. My dad was pleased that the taxi driver only charged us $250 NT for his time and trouble.

Matsu Island

From Taipei, we flew to Matsu Island off the coast of China, where my father was stationed as a 24-year-old. He lived in the small fishing village of Houao, amidst stone houses and narrow alleyways...

In a house where no one else dared live. He lived in a haunted house that is now in ruin and disrepair. The locals have never torn down the structure or rebuilt it, because of their fear of ghosts and retaliation, so the structure remains as a relic of a former time.

My father seemed to be in some disbelief that the structure should remain. Upon entering the building which now has no roof, just trees overgrown into the space, he pointed to the back room where he once slept on a wooden board, and to the corner in the front room where a mortar shell fell through the roof.

We then hiked up a mountainside to see the military outpost where he was later stationed. Upon summitting the hill, I came upon a group of soldiers yelling and making rapid movements, as they practiced their military exercises. This cannon was briefly pointed towards me.

Dad was transferred from the village to the barracks on the mountain. He thinks it was because he appeared to be less than a model soldier, with his shirtsleeves rolled up. He also neglected to wear his cap. Not a shining example - I suspect that the transfer may have been a demotion, when considering the living quarters of those stationed on the mountain. No light. No windows. Just dismal jail-like cells.

Taipei

We went from Central Taiwan on to Taipei, the capital city where shops and eateries abound. We stayed at my cousin's apartment in the Xinyi District, a short distance from Taipei 101, once the world's tallest building, until the Arabs built something taller in Dubai.

Visiting Taipei means visiting the National Palace Museum. Visiting the National Palace Museum means two things - jade cabbage and fatty pork carvings.

This visit, I was delighted to discover a new favorite. A very special spoon holder for a soup ladle fashioned in the shape of a goose. Ceramic ladle is incised with Sanskrit.

We also spent some time at the 228 Museum - a memorial museum dedicated to preserving the history of Taiwan under Martial Law and an era of political upheaval that left an indelible mark upon my father's generation.

This display commemorates a small portion of the 20,000 people who were executed under the military regime.

While in Taipei, I also made a visit to Treasure Hill. The community once housed Kuo Min Tang soldiers who arrived in Taiwan with Chiang Kai Shek. Soldiers squatted in the land around the Gongguang MRT station and settled the area for decades. Several years ago, there was a push by the city to displace these now elderly residents from their substandard housing. The Taipei Artist Village intervened and worked with the city to preserve the village and now manage a few of the spaces within the community. Old grandpas can still be seen walking through the housing development, alongside tourists taking photos and designers and artists who office in spaces within the renovated village.

Earthquake ruins

My cousin took us to the earthquake sites that he was aware of. But there is also an earthquake museum on the site of a junior high school that my trusty Rough Guide referred us to. The school was built along the fault line, and as a result, the running track split and several buildings were left in ruin. Because the earthquake took place at nite, no one was killed in the disaster. The school was eventually converted into a museum that preserves the ruined structures, exhibiting exposed rebar and concrete to give the public a sense of the shoddy craftmanship and quality that went into the making of some of these buildings that ultimately caused their collapse.

Looking into crumbled classrooms, a viewer sees old AV equipment, fans and hardware, living spaces suddenly interrupted.

When I visited Taiwan in 2003, I also visited a ruined temple. The temple was flattened, kind of like a frosted cake that had collapsed.

It was cordoned off and had a giant censer/incense holder collapsed on its side.

The earth gods inside the temple were relocated to a structure across the street. Locals commented that the gods had not done their job in protecting the people over which they reign.

Now a new temple has been rebuilt to replace the old one. And they sit side by side.The gods have not been reinstalled inside the temple.

Taiwan 2012

From December 3-23, I visited Taiwan with my father to tour the places of his adolescence and young adulthood, and to view and explore sites of ruin and upheaval that were high on my list of things to see.

Our first stop was Nantou - my 1st uncle who is 87 years old lives in this area. Nantou is relatively close to the epicenter of the 9.21 (9/21 is the date, the magnitude was closer to a 7) earthquake that decimated much of Taiwan in 1999. My cousin took us to the epicenter to see the eruptions in the land and the buildings that have been preserved as a document of that disaster.

At the Ji Ji Memorial in Jiufenershan, a severely damaged house has been preserved.

Visitors to the house walk into the structure at a slant in order to maintain their balance. Shifts in the magnetic field of the house also make metal and coins stick to some of the interior walls of the structure.

Further up the mountain, ruptures in the earth, where rock was pushed out, are still visible. I took this photograph overlooking a red-roofed house that was tossed across the mountain. Where I stood taking the picture, was where the house used to be.

Upcoming

A couple of upcoming readings:

Feb. 26: Richard Hugo House, 7 pm - an event to celebrate the anniversary of White Pine Press

March 14: Ballard Public Library, 7 pm - the About Time Reading Series

Cabazon Dinos

Over the years, my husband has taken me to many places that were significant to his childhood - from the Crater of Diamonds State Park where Arkansans dig for diamonds to the Inner Space Caverns outside of Austin - I've had many a chance to experience bringing his memories to life. On a recent visit to California, I had a chance to take Kort to a place that was special to my early life - the Cabazon dinos outside of Palm Springs.

Used to be that there was just one dino, "Diney." He was created by a model-maker for Knott's Berry Farm who bought a roadside restaurant where he needed to attract more traffic and business. He decided to build a dinosaur.

A few years ago, the dinosaurs were sold to an entity that promotes Creationism. The Creationists believe that men and dinosaurs roamed the earth at the same time and co-existed. A sort of anti-evolutionary stance.

The new owners installed robotic dinos and also built a theme park that charges a modest admission. We could not resist the kitsch.

Bear’s Den

like Austin twenty years ago
weird, w/ the “cool kids”
cheap beer, dive bar, small-
town profs plus spouses

still seeking employment –
the Conway Twitties play
a goodbye show for
the departing adjunct

his partner gone already
to the Second City, he’s already
checked out, two academics
each divorced both confess

it’s awful in Arkansas
to be a single man – then
“I’m pretty sure Latino
women get me best” the fantasy

of a fall-back career or
being denied tenure so you can
go forward with living the rest
of your life past the acrylic yarn

bombs clinging to blighted trees
in Simon Park, each Fall, more
students stunned to find their
favorite pedagogues gone

Kumari

"Sometimes I don’t feel like going on my throne when mommy asks me. I’ve got to get up so early." - Sajani Sakya, The Kumari of Bhaktapur

Perhaps it was her third eye
opened inwards that aroused
Sajani Sakya to rebel against

divinity - sacked for venturing
beyond Nepali borders &
behaviors unbefitting to

a living goddess

even the hardest working
deities need a holiday – hers
a tour to Silver Springs

to screen a film about
her own existence, risking
reversion to common status

forestalling the mutation
at menarche when Kali leaves
the child body behind, her guardians

mean to purify her,
she elects for early retirement
at eleven years of age, passes

the entrance tests to middle school
where she sets her eyes on the path
of teacher-doctor-camerawoman

Inner Space

a guide aims her flashlight
at the borehole drilled
half a century before

the build of I-35, below
ground it’s twenty degrees cooler
than the blazing temps out there

the cavern where my Texan mate
takes me to find relief from heat, beneath
a canopy of pencil-thin soda straw stalactites

the Permian floodwater
maze that claimed the lives
of Ice Age species, mammoth

armadillo and sabre-toothed cat,
swamped in quicksand,
a pyramid of bat guano piled high

on the grotto floor, grows taller
with time, past the talus
cone of bone sink I spot

a crumbling tusk,
pass my tongue over a back
molar claimed by dental caries

capped one month ago
in gold, what relics what
remains hereafter

Inner Space

a guide aims her flashlight
at the borehole drilled
half a century before

the build of I-35, below
ground it’s twenty degrees cooler
than the blazing temps out there

the cavern where my Texan mate
takes me to find relief from heat, beneath
a canopy of soda straw stalactites

the Permian floodwater
maze that claimed the lives
of Ice Age species, mammoth

armadillo and sabre-toothed cat,
swamped in quicksand,
a pyramid of bat guano piled high

on the grotto floor, past the talus
cone of bone sink I spot
a crumbling tusk

wall murals of camel and horse
depict a different history
than the one I knew

growing up, Cabazon dinos
the novelty architectures of my youth
that call me home,

rising over desert hills,
the concrete Apatosaurus
reclaimed by Creationists

selling toy replicas their labels
warn, “The fossil record does
not support evolution."

Blotter

San Marcos PD send someone
out to follow up after I file the report,
the police dick visits Hillside Ranch

having already talked to the neighbors
across the breezeway about the email
I got at work – Say another word

about our flag and we’ll take you down.

Detective Duwayne Poorboy deduces
simple country boys getting their degrees from
Texas State couldn’t make up such a thing,

No matter how many white guys you fuck,
you’ll never be anything but a worthless gook.

a gut check tells him their mamas
taught ‘em right from wrong and for
the record, the confederate flag stands

for something else to people from these parts –
a source of regional pride he beams –
not unlike the hanging

of a soccer pennant for a favorite team,
or displaying a banner from China he says
scanning the living space for clues

to my background, but I was born here

Go back to where you came from!

when I tell my closest friend who
shuddered that time she climbed
the stairs to my walk-up,

she doesn’t hesitate to send
her cousins around – Black
law enforcement officers

from the Austin PD appear
to intimidate the antagonizers

MANASA SAROVAR / (MIND LAKE)

one hour into a 10-mile hike around
White Rock Lake, Lama Dorje turns
around to his slowest disciples and says,
Do not feel bad to go at your own speed.
The master picks up his stride so that
all we see retreating into the distance
is a red speck flanked by his closest
associates – a gaggle of golden-haired
female patrons – we must choose what
to cultivate; I steel myself to rise
to the challenge when you suggest
we slow down instead to keep step
alongside Lama’s older pupil
with the foot injury; we are
none of us social thinking
about circumambulation,
the pilgrimage past Winfrey Point,
Flagpole Hill, the Pump Station,
to each his own
relationship to the sacred
Manasa Sarovar,
Mapam Yumco
Lake Manas
this inland sea
where buffalo once
drifted encircled now by
million-dollar homes which wink
at us at dusk upon completion
of our death march, we go off
to separate vehicles, no sign of the lama

vernal pool

scattered across the pink batholith monadnock,
weather pits sprout Texas bluestem, live oak,
miniature soil islands independent ecologies
all of their own – 425 feet above ground
opening out over the Llano Uplift,
we scale Enchanted Rock on New Year’s Day
to get to highest ground,
six months since our last move
and still strangers to Texas Hill Country,
I inspect a water-filled depression
remembering the tide pools of Mora Beach,
when you point out the one-inch invertebrates
swimming upside down just under the surface,
the fabled fairy shrimp
whose eggs survive even in drought,
to be revived in salt water or when rain returns
to the granite shelter, evidence of animal
existence on a barren rock,
adapting to a new habitat over millenia,
we descend the dome to feast w/ friends
a supper of black-eyed peas

a horse is a horse (of course of course)

my father fills my ear with Confucian
proverbs all throughout my girlhood
each blade of grass has its drop of dew
a tree without roots is rootless, strange
koans I applied myself to understanding
even when the message was not quite
right: the first Noble Truth is where
I parked myself - suffering more profound
then joy - I saw him run that horse
until it broke down beneath him,
not grasping the exchange,
ride a horse to find your horse
the actual adage offering a mule
for a horse, a donkey for a mare,
the trade in and trading up
for a higher vehicle

Sunday at Alemany Flea Market

Bernal Heights, sunlit morning
up early, I wander in & out of stalls
sprawled across a parking lot
set aside for the weekly farmer’s

market, vendors offer old VHS tapes,
saw bits & rusted blades, postcards,
an elbow patch in the likeness
of a heart, bound paper calendar

from four years back, printed
with wood block yantras,
a pinky ring bezeled with
the image of MLK who’s

birth the city remembers
tomorrow, objects of intimate
worth, talismans to the past,
transmitted in the remnants of

what other lives have treasured
a hawker bemoans struggling
sales in the new year, higher
fees for space rentals scaling

back to fewer days,
I listen to an exchange
take place in Chinese
reminded of my dad haggling

for his kid’s attire at the Colton
Swap Meet, my mother anxious to
go home, ready to walk away saw
only cheap goods, someone else’s junk

emergency poem

“After hundred of times of similar thunderstorms approaching…
you see them pass, you kind of get jaundiced about the warnings
and tend not to give them the weight you probably should”
– Jeff Lehr, reporter at The Joplin Globe

first week on campus an air horn
sounds at noon – the screech & wail of
an angry warning that can’t be ignored –
commonplace as earthquake drills
interrupting my youth (duck & cover on cue)

if it were real, an email
would have confirmed it;
I forego making phone calls
every Wednesday at lunch,
fall into an uneasy routine

so that when funnels do touch
down in Greenbrier, I don’t bat
an eye about showing up to meet
my coach at the rec center across
the road, the health club emptied

of all activity, when we find each other
he fingers a mass of swirling clouds
heading south towards town on a flatscreen
– all events on hold he’s been charged
with gathering up stray students, gym rats

huddled in the hall until the storm blows over
but I’d rather be crushed in my own home
with the one I love then be caught
dead remote tweeting about tree fall
or power outage – common sense

says the safest place in a storm
is on a highway, never mind
the part about lightning vs. tornado
strike – “I’m not responsible”
my trainer says outright – having made

one ill-founded decision to shift
from Lone Star to Razorback State,
what’s one more calculated risk?
given the gamble to escape Oz and
find a way back to Kansas –

wouldn’t we all take our chances?

swine

outside a sandwich shop
the boy with a scarlet dyed
Mohawk herds close to

his teenage brothers, shaved scalps
a tribal affiliation, I cannot
look beyond their bald heads

to see the red & white jerseys
emblazoned w/ wrathful ridge-
backed peccaries – an identity

formed around shirts not skin,
college football, plays games
with the mind hearing dogs

behind every chain-link fence
yap at me, as stray cats
present mice & hantavirus,

I have always been scared
witless of wildlife

Chitchat at the superstore

the cashier catches me
off guard when she wonders
aloud – I’m emptying out a cart
full of moving supplies: polymer totes,
packing tape, solvents to scrub
down a greasy stove, glass cleaner
for a bathroom mirror trying to see
things from her view, no polish,
I ask her to repeat the question
to make sure I hear her right:
Do you do nails?

I look down
at my own ragged cuticles,
gnawed nail folds feeling how
the heart wants to hammer down
the nail that sticks out, put her
in her place – this is not
my immigration story but why do I turn away –
thinking of Asian nail parlors in any town across America,
ubiquitous in Conway, there’s nothing at stake
I leave next week so choose
to state what’s obvious to my own mind
moving away from Arkansas – sorting
my bling into storage boxes

satisfied I speak English
she says she sees it
all the time at Wal-Mart
salon techs stocking up
on acrylic nail forms & fake tips,
organized into the same plastic cases

the tension dissolves between us
into recognizable decorum
bet the weather will be good
where you’re headed – bless
your heart, you live a good life

The Volta has a video poem piece that I created for them here. Poet-scholar Kimberly Alidio was kind enough to write about the poem here.

Kathleen Flenniken, the Washington State Poet Laureate, was kind enough to feature my work on The Far Field recently.

I would love to see more cities create object-based histories of where they've come from.

Mapparium

earth turns to a projection
of the world taken from

the Rand McNally atlas, 1935
West Fr. Africa, Siam, Taihoku –

colonial names for partitioned places,
all the oceans that blanket the planet

elements that are outside of &
interior to our own forms

***

inside the glass map
under a domed vault

my father hidden amongst
a sea of tourists, on opposite

poles of a crystal bridge,
standing thirty feet apart,

a gallery whispers,
the room’s vibration

thick w/ New England
accents my father’s voice

***

alien eye travels straight
to the shape he knows as home,

index finger pointing
skywards one glass section

exists distinct from
six hundred and seven

other hand-painted parcels,
the archipelago of origination

I gaze towards the Bible Belt
remotely sensing my present residence

***

here in the Colony of Massachusetts
Bay, I trace my own displacement

thinking back to former times,
when access to the glass globe

was unregulated – a long outing spent
with a sweetheart I visualized spending

a life w/ – free to come
& go, how we revisit past

geographies w/ those that
we love to form new impressions

of demilitarized zones,
to bring the past with us

the primary school
in my father’s hometown:

Kyo Mizu - Ching Shui - Clear Water

the reflection pool in Boston
echoing old & new

Roadtrip haiku found in my phone

"second best yarn store in
the universe" outside Salina,
wondering where's the first

*

"God sees all evildoers"
posted next to the interstate one sign
after the adult megastore exit

*

herd of cows huddled
in shade beneath a billboard ad
of the golden arches

Dirt

last June store security
at the Super Wal-Mart
bust a school teacher

from Vilonia School District
for shooting footage w/
his i-pod of the view

up shopper’s skirts –
a neighbor on Simms St.
is ousted from editorship

at the OA for kissing
interns & serving them
drinks, at the university

Pres. Meadors resigns over
a gift to fund a facelift for
his house in exchange for

re-upping a major
deal, my boss, a math
teacher swears

people are the same
wherever you go

baby bird

sleepless one more night
thinking about the tiny fledgling
stock-still as sculpture
planted on our sidewalk

around midnight slightly
stunned from its fall to earth
a vacant stare skyward
towards the gingko

it tumbled from when
no one was watching
pulls at my imagination
while Kort tracked the jay

across the front yard
trying to entice it to perch
atop a broken branch
to avoid shedding

his scent talking all
the while about the survival
of the fittest until I wake him
up to say “feral cats”;

he pulls on pants & work
gloves to recover the animal
where we left it beneath
the front stairs the bird

makes no noise when
he picks it up with both
hands to place it up high
safe where we hope

it has a fair advantage

OZARKS

the state I was in
that first / last trip to
Petit Jean covered
head to toe in insect bites

hiking in the stifling
heat of summer to make out
pictographs in the rock “cave” –
a humble stone shelter

roofing the glyphs of early
civilization, all efforts to
discern the shapes of
horse & man from more

recent graffiti as fruitful
as the imaginative act of
cloud gazing, remembering
the rockfaces of Chaco

Canyon & Neah Bay where
we walked out w/out seeing
even one of the forty-four
carvings, no map to mark

the territory – it’s the trappings
right under the nose that
don’t go missed: the Flatirons
of Bear Peak, the snow-

capped dome of
Mt. Rainier, mountains
I have regarded from
safe distances, two years

living in the foothills
of central Arkansas, I see
the Ozarks, become one
w/ the summits when decamping

Back home in the PNW

After a long and exhausting 5-day drive across the country (Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington) with a 22-foot Uhaul truck and auto transporter in tow, Kort and I made it back to Seattle. In our final days, it really felt like Arkansas was conspiring to keep us there - from Wheaton moving falling through on us 24 hours before the pick-up of our belongings for move to contracting with a Uhaul agent who was unable to help up secure our car on the auto transporter. I seriously lost my mind more then once, and saw my partner do the same.

The good news is that we are here. We are renting a condo in Ballard, just three blocks from downtown Ballard on Market Street.

And the even better news is that I am writing again, after a long dry spell. As we were crossing through Fayetteville, and I saw signs for the "Aux Arcs" (Ozarks) - I realized what had been missing in the poetry manuscript that I just drafted together of poems produced in the last few years. The poems that are explicitly about the experience of living and working in Arkansas were absent. Unspoken. Topics that I was not able to approach for many reasons. So the book is no longer called "Six Persimmons" (after one of the poems in the collection) - its new name is "Aux Arcs" - the historical term for "of or at Arkansas" but also the "arc" or bend, as in a river, as in the trajectory of my life which took me into the Deep South for three years and away from the West Coast. It is the book in my oeuvre that is most definitively about a specific geography, as well as busting out of its tiny boundaries. The poems on food and animals will take a back seat to the new theme of self-exile and estrangement in Dixie. This is not to say that Arkansas was a complete and total bardo zone - we found a community of friends and collaborators inside and outside of our workplaces and made deep connections. But as a whole, I could not see myself giving birth to or raising children in small-town Arkansas. Coming back to Seattle was about choosing a specific community. And a life.

I also found a painting in the collections of Arkansas' Crystal Bridges Museum that is an appropriate representation of my experiences in the South - "The Island" by Walton Ford. It is an image of savagery and survival. Note: The breed of Tasmanian wolf depicted in the painting is now extinct.

So if you read this blog and are curious about the new writings that I am posting - they will reference the experiences of the last three years. The Osaka poem, Main Street, etc.

Main Street

out front of
the Conway post office
fresh from mailing

notes to a college
search committee, I turn over
the last question asked

snap back
to earth when
sputum lands

inches from
my leather dress shoes
three teenage

white boys parked,
the one in the passenger seat
who watched me walk

up; timed his throat
clearing just so spitting towards
isn’t no crime

this ain’t China w/
some government
ban on discharging

in public the veil
between town &
gown stripped bare

I climb inside the rental
car where my husband
asks if everything’s okay

confused I am careful
when I describe spit coming
in my direction, thinking

of our next-door neighbors
in an even smaller town,
good ol' boys who proudly

fly the southern cross

Domoyaki Osaka

After inputting my order,
the Korean-born cook
shapes rice balls

behind the stainless-steel counter;
Kort recalling his days
waiting tables at Sushi Tora

on Pearl Street, how
only male chefs prepared
the premium cuts

of fish laid over
seasoned rice b/c
the core temperature

of a woman’s
palms aren’t quite fitted
to sushi production

post-Fukushima, I read
in the NYTimes of the shift
in Japanese rice loyalty

the rise in imported grain
how we reorient our bodies &
minds to what’s at hand

Road Trip Haiku

outside Mrs. Baird's
a man scatters hunks of bread
in car park, no birds for miles

*

in Kansas the roadside sign:
"fill-in the gap" dental - the class
gulf, the tooth void

*

"EAT GAS"

My poem "Milk Crime" appears in the new issue/anthology of Magnolia Journal.

Some last impressions of the Deep South

scanning the yard sale
sign & stumbling on whether
its maker scribed "chrap" or cheap

*

busted toilet bowl
seat doubles as a side table
for frontyard smokers

(w/ additional ashtray function)

New poems are recently published in Spoon River Poetry Review and Kadar Koli's special issue on "Violence."

Ayurvedic adventures

I recently spent seven days living in a yoga ashram (Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's Art of Living Center) outside of Montreal in La Mauricie. During that week, I went on a 2-day liquid fast, had detoxifying Ayurvedic treatments involving heavy oils poured onto the body, and consumed almost nothing but steamed vegetables and various grain-based porridges for five days. The whole thing was overseen by a vaidya (doctor) from India who diagnosed my basic constitution and gave me some tips for staying in balance. In between treatments, we meditated, chanted "om nama shivaya" and learned about guruji's teachings. I am not a convert. He seems like a happy enough teacher with a positive message, but I could not relate to the perspective. That could be attributed to that I haven't learned his sudarshan kriya (tm) which is only transmittable via a living teacher. On the other hand, I signed up for a panchakarma wellness retreat and that is what my mind was prepared for.

The highlights of the retreat were the Ayurvedic treatments. Abhyanga, marma, netra basti, and karna purna. The netra basti involves having a dam of dough built up around the eye, which is then filled with warm, melted ghee. You open your eye in a lake of ghee and practice a series of eye strengthening exercises. The result is that the treatment clears the visual image bank. For me, the experience on the table was profound and lent itself to literal visions. Also, netra basti is like conditioning your eyelashes and eye tissues. Deeply nourishing.

The karna purna involves having warm ghee poured into the ear canal until the ear is filled with butter. I noticed some tinnitus in my left ear which was a little bit distracting, but my relationship to hearing and sound also felt altered after the treatment. Excess vata accumulates in the ear, and the karna purna is a good treatment for soothing the mind.

I am attracted to taking health vacations to get back in balance, particularly after three years of excess stress and living out of harmony. But the new lifestyle habits will be a challenge to integrate. Ayurvedic guidelines are many and strict - no onions or garlic, no food that is older then 4 hours old, no dairy, no/minimal gluten, no excessive salt, no excessive sugar, no excessive processed foods, nothing fermented, eat sitting down, eat in silence, eat between certain hours, eat fruit first, eat sweets/dessert first, etc., oh yes, and no alcohol.

My challenge is to be a little more flexible with myself, knowing that I am a lay person, usually work excessive hours, and don't have a personal chef. Plus, I have a husband with a different prakriti. Going off of the cleanse and then traveling to DC to wrap up a leadership program while trying to maintain my diet caused some serious distress. Back at home now, the fridge is stuffed with fresh vegetables and though I have some protein cravings, I am going hardcore. Which of course is the fastest way to hit the wall...

Ashram haiku

too aware of not squashing
slugs on the porch,
bitten by mosquitoes

put off by social
media signs in the ashram's
toilet - "staying connected"

"follow guruji" on
twitter, daily wisdoms
from mister mister

remembering I keep
the lama who married me
on speed dial

ask me that which
you wish - the doctor stated,
with back turned

first day, panchakarma
one woman can't stop talking
about coffee & toast

green juice for two
straight days not as bad
as one might imagine

opening one eye
in a lake of ghee, deep
in the primordial soup

this aversion
to slugs a kind of elephant-
mouse complex

after heavy rain
brown slugs climbed up
the window, porch, & walls

the visual image bank
wiped clean, my mom radiant
w/ love appears to me

Memorial Day

in the middle
of another fight
I walk out

to another stray
cat collapsed in front
of the house,

the Monday
of remembrance
a number we didn’t think

we’d need to know
by heart, the best remedy
in the absence

of animal control: city
sanitation or to bury the corpse
ourselves, plastic bag

the lifeless body
cast into the waste
this sad event

ending disagreement

Turrell series, part four

This is the fourth poem in an ongoing series of my experiences of visiting James Turrell skyspaces. I was disappointed that the Crystal Bridges Museum blocked visitor access to the outdoor installation during my visit a few weekends ago and hope they make the necessary repairs to the "Way of Color" tout suite...

day break

“closed for repairs &
maintenance” the stone
bunker broken down

metal grate blocking
approach, out-of-order
overhead blue yonder

still visible through
the oculus’ aperture
cut out of stainless

steel going through
the roof upon discovering
the repository’s shuttering of

the "place of contemplation"

5/19/12, “The Way of Color”, Bentonville, AR

On wellness

A gift to myself: http://center.artofliving.ca/ayurvedic-wellness-retreat-0.

I was quoted recently in an article in the Dallas Morning News talking to Beatriz Terrazas about the novelist Ben Fountain.

My former boss at the Dallas Museum of Art is retiring this May. One of my old colleagues asked me to write a poem about her. Gail was my first boss out of SAIC/grad school. She mentored many young museum professionals who are now thriving in their careers. This is a poem based off of a Cy Twombly work, one of Gail's favorite pieces in the collections, and a tribute to her work as a teacher.

the lay of the land

(after Cy Twombly’s Cold Stream)

for Gail Davitt

looping back / to a schoolboy’s / classroom /

hung w/ blackboards / coating / of chalk residue /

unduly dense / to wipe / away /

a memory / the first experience of / learning to read –

a picture / scribbled cursive / coils springing /

into focus / sound taking shape / on the tongue /

before speech developed/ the furious doodles /

of the mind / unfurling before / the eye /

guiding you towards / something almost / being said

New Beginnings

I have been away from Blogger for so long that the entire user interface has changed and I missed it. More updates of new adventures to come soon.

Crystal Bridges and Eureka Springs

K and I went to Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges Museum this weekend on route to my gig at the Books in Bloom Festival in Eureka Springs. The highlight of the collection? Moshe Safdie's architecture which holds together Walton's collection of American art.

The flow of traffic in the building felt too directive and linear in terms of where a visitor starts and ends, and the intel given my security/staff/volunteers (i.e. start at the beginning and the building will lead you to where you want to go - except we wanted to start with 20th century art). Sad that the Turrell ganzfeld had been gated off from visitors - not sure if the bunker is only opened up at sunset and sunrise, but disappointed that the space should be so carefully controlled, unlike some of the other Turrell spaces I've visited. Heard gossip of the Nasher's skyspace in DFW getting shut down due to large constructions in the skyline that now obscure the sky view. Saw Rosie the Riveter by Rockwell, several Jacob Lawrence and Romare Beardens, and a fairly extensive collection of Marsden Hartley painting. Another highlight - on the "Art Trail" - a bronze sow that was so realistic that flies converged upon it.

Sold $80 worth of poetry books in Eureka Springs, including several copies of EQUIVALENCE. And stayed in the most haunted hotel in America - the Crescent Hotel and Spa, an old Victorian mansion that at one time was a medical hospital for cancer patients treated by Norman Baker. I'm really glad that we didn't take the midnight hour ghost tour before going to bed. As is, while taking an afternoon nap upon arriving, I imagined something touching the sole of my foot at the foot of the bed...

EASTER SUNDAY (after John Wieners)

This morning my husband shaves
the lawn, the grass trimmer

choking up before the yard
is fully manicured,

we keep our shoes on
at our neighbor’s flat

Maundy & Paschal greetings –
traditions we leave behind
in Anatole

at the host’s table someone
counts the number of skeptics
out at sunrise

clipping the green while
overheard from
the kitchen

I decided to give
up Lent for Lent

not one,
to be outdone
the native scribbler shows

off her sculpting chops
in yellow marshmallow
tableaux, the memoir of

her characters retold
through sugar-spun rabbits,
a gelatin hostess gift

for the vegetarian mistress
of the household, indelible
while tomorrow

marks the start of
Rwandan Genocide Memorial
Week, remembering

eight days into April
the poet of Boston’s Joy Street

who imagined a new
cross in the wind
a communion

where we are
altered by another’s
charity, taken aback

by the soft push
against the cheek

On Seeing Roger Shimomura’s Crossing the Delaware

in the Napoleonic portrait
of the artist, a rain-lashed
skiff sculls the River,

Shimomura standing
in for patriot with classic
hand-in jacket pose,

reappraises Leutze’s landscape
omitting the general’s
crimson watch ornament

read by legislators
as ruby-tipped genitalia
in 1999, 2,300 textbook

reproductions in Cobb County,
Georgia covered over with
trouser-stained paint

while in the Lone Star State
book buyers rewrite school
curriculum to include Germans

& Italians
in the internment
the lost fob

standing

hidden hooks
in a sneak attack
suckerpunch

palming a roll
of quarters
New Jersey mint

e pluribus unum