Bourgeon

The Stroke

followed him up the back stairs,
through the kitchen door,

passing me at the table
and into the living room

where he collapsed on the floor.
I picked up the yellow phone

and dialed the number I knew
but forgot. All I could do was watch

him curl on the carpet, eyes filled
with surprise and his body

confused and shivering
like live buds cut at the root—

blood puddling like rain
in his head. I thought the ambulance

would never come so I waited
by the road and paced until the first

sound of the siren made everything
as real as a man’s face split in pain.

Ode to a Scar

Where did yours come from? Mine?

I fell running in the rain.

I fell chasing a boy in July.

A boy was running from me.

I started to bleed into the cement.

The cement was shocked by my eyebone.

My eyebone didn’t see that coming.

The half-moon scar reddens in the summer.

I fell chasing a boy in the rain.

Jona Colson’s poems, translations, and interviews have been published in Ploughshares, The Southern Review, The Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. His debut poetry collection, Said Through Glass, won the 2018 Jean Feldman Poetry Prize from the Washington Writers’ Publishing House.  He is also the poetry editor of This Is What America Looks Like: Poetry and Fiction from DC, Maryland, and Virginia (WWPH, 2021).

Image by Petr Novák, Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 2.5 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5>, via Wikimedia Commons

BY THE BLACK THREAD OF A ROAD

I sit lingering on the rim
of some meandering water,
my legs tucked under me,
and daydream he’s driving

on the black thread of a road,
a seam between the bank
of the water and whatever
the wider world holds.

I sit still as a stone,
the sun shining overhead,
a large brass button
on the blue blazer of the sky.

I feel smothered in sweat,
my breathing as elusive
as the man embroidered
into each of my dreams.

IN THE HEART

Pay attention to the path you take,
made of mulch to muffle
the crunch of your walking.

This is a quiet zone. Even stopping
makes its own commotion.
The snap of the camera’s shutter,

as she takes her husband’s photo,
sounds out of place, though
he wants her to capture all

the calmness here in the heart
of the forest. For the longest time,
all she’s wanted is to hold onto him.

Despite her warnings not to leave
the path, he strides toward slanted
light and stands where sunbeams

seem palpable. He lifts his face
and lets the glade’s warm stillness
slow his impatient heart.

She tries to freeze on film
that second when he smiles back
at her, as if the seductive essence

of whatever endows this scene
and place with unspoken harmony
can be caught and carried home.

Lenny Lianne was born in Washington, DC and grew up and lived in the suburbs of Northern Virginia: Arlington, Annandale and Alexandria. She also lived in Ocean City, MD. She is the author of four books of poetry, most recently THE ABCs OF MEMORY, reissued by Unicorn Bay Press. She holds a MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from George Mason University and has taught various poetry workshops on both coasts. She lives in Arizona with her husband and their dog.

Image: TwentiethApril1986, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

approaching eternity

the navigator is the bishop’s
daughter  he said before he left us

planted in the astronomers’
meadow  head thrown back
and eyes open to the night
i study stars whose light
has traversed countless
measures of time
and space to reach us
recalling constellations
i learned at his side

i was small  the sky vast
and my father somewhere
between me and the dark

October Peaches
“For everything there is a season . . .”
—Ecclesiastes 3:1

We’re supposed to look forward
to the holy days at year’s end,

but it’s summer I love –
when life seems sweetest.

It was summer when I brought my family here
to this market, after we buried my father.

In the end, he couldn’t swallow – an IV
delivered fluids to his failing body.

Cup of coffee, I still hear him saying, for me?

even now, as I take
one last bite of summer.

advent

“I am in your anxiety, for I have shared it by suffering it.
And in doing so, I wasn’t even heroic according to the wisdom of the world.”
—Karl Rahner, “Christmas: Ever Since I Became Your Brother. . .”

so we get spent striving
or save ourselves  opening
quiet as snowfall

your coming  not explosive
like ecstasy
but edgeless as joy

your essence
exceeding
human empathy

what use have we
for your needless suffering
or our own

seduced by your anguished
beauty  frustrated
with your enigmatic narrative

we could tie you to a chair
and beat you til you give up
an easier meaning

but we have already nailed you
to a piece of wood  still
we do not understand

white christmas

come caroling with us,
says kathy, on the first snowy night
in december – an idea
so irresistibly norman rockwell,
i immediately agree.
led by a tall bearded white man
in a tall black “monopoly” hat,
we wishyouamerrychristmas our way
through brookland: silent night,
we three kings . . .
hark the herald angels sing.
it’s a far cry from the new england
wonderland of my chinese american
childhood, but I couldn’t not sing,
even if I wanted to – all those years
in the christmas pageant warbling
glo-o-o-o-o-o-o-ria from the balcony
of st. john’s episcopal church in a white
choir robe – the littlest angel, too young
to get the irony when our choirmaster
misspells it: a – n – g – l – e.
when we got older, we stopped believing
in santa, but we were supposed to
keep believing in jesus.

Lori Tsang’s poems have been published in dISorient,  Controlled Burn,  Amerasia Journal,  WordWrights,  phati’ude, Crab Orchard Review,  The Journal of Asian American Renaissance, The Drumming Between Us,  Gargoyle, and the Asian Pacific American Journal, and in the anthologies, Drumvoices,  Screaming Monkeys,  and Beyond the Frontier.  Her essays and reviews have been published in the MultiCultural Review,  Washington Post Book World, Women’s Review of Books, and Amerasia Journal,  and in the anthology,  Half and Half [Writers on Growing Up Biracial + Bicultural].  Her work has been taught in high school and college courses on race and culture.  

She has appeared at the Nuyorican Poets’ Café, the Whitney Museum, the Library of Congress, and other poetry/performance series and venues, and was founding director of the All Blues Jazz/Poetry Ensemble.  She has performed at community events, workshops, and benefits for organizations such as the Indochinese Community Center, Democratic Socialists of America, Amnesty International, American Friends Service Committee, First Congregational Church, and All Souls Unitarian Church. 

She studied filmmaking at Howard University and produced and directed an award-winning film, ”Chinaman’s” Choice.”  She was a founding director of Asian American Arts & Media, editor of AAMPLITUDE, and program coordinator for the Asian American Film Festival.

Image: Rochus Hess, Attribution, via Wikimedia Commons