reaping

troubled that my first experience
with sweet cherries should be
bleached maraschinos bathed

in red 40 & dropped into a coke
float or perched atop a banana
split, my father drove the kids

to the nearest orchard in Riverside
Co. where we harvested to
our hearts’ content,

limbs heavy with orbs
I reached w/ a ladder,
in the June heat our bodies

grew brown as Mexican
migrant workers, my mother shaded
her face & skin fair

in contrast to my own,
she a Hsiue, my father a Pai
together we gorged on ruby

red crop, not knowing
the origins of Bing - the Chinese
foreman’s heirloom fruit

a cultivar bred a century before
by a tenant farmer forborn
the passage home

Upcoming Readings

March 1, 2014
6 p.m. - 12 a.m.
From the Convergence Zone
Sole Repair Shop
Seattle, WA

March 26, 2014
6 p.m.
APRIL Festival
Location TBD
Seattle, WA

May 14, 2014
7 p.m.
Beacon Bards @ The Station
Seattle, WA

the city's newfangled
digital kiosks mirror slashes
to public bus routes

drops of dew on bare
maple at dawn shine bright
as white xmas lights

after feasting on the gluten-
free meal, I spy my husband
scarf down a scone

I am reading at the Wing Luke Asian Museum on Thursday, December 5, at 6 p.m. If you live in the Seattle area, please come! Book signing will follow the reading.

rituals

as a wedding gift I was given
a book of Tibetan wisdom
a single epigraph for each day
of the year, to offset an image
of Buddhist Shangri-La

when my father visits he scans
through the volume for the pictures,
skipping over words; when I walk
past it’s no longer October 13th
a month out from my son’s birth

dog-eared to a page of street
children marking March &
the winter chill, I restore
the calendar back to today’s date
return to find the book opened

to a spread of Himalayan
mountains, my father moving
backwards, resists time

future POTUS

when I tell my father
Tomo was born w/ the caul,
he’s sure the boy is destined
for greatness, future leader
of the free world, my father has never
voted in a domestic election
though he lays claim to shaking
hands w/ Ronald Reagan
once in an elevator in the 1990s
after the Gipper’s term is up
before dementia sets in
at five, my father had already
instilled in my brother how
he would be a doctor; my path
writ as lawyer – I parroted
this profession to all who asked
what do you want to be when you grow up
not yet knowing law the meaning
of calling, the power of speech

Maternity Haiku

someone's spouse passes out
while the women watch slides
of birth by c-section

*

just shy of thirty-five
weeks, tsukimi chakai - I gaze
at the ripening moon

Ballard News Tribune Press for AUX ARCS

Profiled in the Ballard News Tribune.

Upcoming....

I'll be reading next week at the Ballard Public Library from 6-8 pm with three other poets for the It's About Time series.

Press for AUX ARCS in The Stranger

Paul Constant reviews AUX ARCS at The Stranger.

Profile at Seattle Wrote

Thanks to Norelle Done for featuring me on Seattle Wrote.

Press for AUX ARCS

The Poetry Foundation blog, Harriet, has a posting on AUX ARCS today, highlighting an interview that I did with Rauan Klassnik.

The full interview is here at HTML Giant.

I am also the featured author of the month at Crowd the Book, a project run by a couple of old classmates from Naropa.

City Arts Magazine also profiles my work.

New Book

I have a new book of poems and photographs that published on July 1 from La Alameda Press, the publishers of my first full-length collection Equivalence, which came out 10 years ago.

Read more about AUX ARCS here:

Asian American Literature Fans
NW Asian Weekly
Jesus Jazz Buddhism

Listen to a public radio piece for New Letters on the Air on my recent work, here.

Order AUX ARCS from SPD, or for a signed personalized copy, email me.

swishing the toilets,
cleaning the house, readying
the mind to write

game show's lone female
hopeful buzzes in the answer
first: what is the glass ceiling

this weather can't
make up it's mind - fleece tights
one day, bare legs the next

cursing the worm in
my storebought basil, those black
specks unhatched eggs or poops?

Yesterday's haiku

staying silent towards
the woman crowding my space
about the cream cheese on her beak

*

no. 17, morning commute:
watching a woman apply her eyes
lips skin and cheeks