Poetry
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“Wild Cranes” Four poems by Nirmal Ghosh (translated into Chinese by Liuyu Ivy Chen)
The “Wild Cranes” poetry and calligraphy exhibition featuring works by Nirmal Ghosh, Liuyu Ivy Chen, Zhao Xu, and Tanya Ghosh will be held at the Chinese American Museum, DC from 12 to 19 July 2021.
1.
How long can one gaze into the green hills,
Between curtains of rain?
The dribble of water down the gutter
Measures our minutes on this Earth.
***
透过雨帘，
你能凝望青山多久？
雨水滴入沟槽
倒数我们在地球上的一分一秒。
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Two Poems by Jessica Goodfellow
Glass PianoAlexandria of Bavaria,believing she’d swallowed a glass piano,moved carefully through the world,even in doorways turning sidewaysso as not to shatter it.My father, my neighbor, crabwalkthrough the world in whatever way they mustso as not to pierce the things they believeinside themselves. Perhaps I do it too—it’s hard to see in a glassless mirrorof cloudy steel plate screwed to cinderblock wall, -
“Collapse” by Alessio Zanelli
above: “Close-Up of Crater Copernicus” from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, November 23rd 1966
A snip knocked down the stronghold,
a behemoth of sureties with feet of clay,
in one go, like the tiny pebble big Goliath.
Now we know we’re all in the same league,
none of us leads or is able to sow new seeds.
In saecula saeculorum, as the sky implodes
over man’s crazy, inconclusive endeavor,
a novel never ending flood will follow.
Who’s gone, who’s left, we lost count,
the background picture still unseen, -
“Spring Shadow” by Mahlon Banda
above: Winter Sunlight (ca 1939) by Glenn Stuart Pearce
*Where oh where is my sparrow?
Who bounced on the naked tree,
Flirting with the nascent sun,
That refuses to show its golden flames.
The sun is not yet prepared to engrave
The solid oaken silhouette,
She refuses to burn it into cement, stone, or passerby.
I must squint to keep sight of you,
My red-bellied black spider of a bird,
Alighting and lighting —
You flick a pointy wing, -
Four Poems by John Deming
Rhapsody in Rat
Rats know when you’re watching them.
Yeah, so I’m smoking on the fire escape
overlooking the alley, and rats
fleck in and out, as they do,
and I look with pure fury
at a rat maybe fifty yards off,
its furry back, thick tail
and burning oven of pursuit,
and it is not even facing me
but freezes then sprints
through a brick wall. The rat
ran through a brick wall.
Rats can feel you looking at them. -
film room 208, avenue of the poet rilke by Christian Formoso (translated from the Chilean Spanish by Sydney Tammarine and Terry Hermsen) Photography by Michael Angelo Yáñez
film room 208, avenue of the poet rilke
1
fade to black and two cut-off images: a woman in front of a window—the gesture of gathering her hair from her face—and a smudged name like graffiti scrawled on the bridge at ronda. someone who looks like you across from the woman. a blink. the end of the gesture and the movement already washed-out and no longer there.
2
you refuse to speak, thinking of the tree on a small hill. you want to see it in the scene and so it appears.
