Poetry Feature: Asian American Introduction To be Asian American, by virtue of its linguistic construction, is to be somewhat less or more than just plain American, a happenstance that many would gladly exchange for the chance to don an identity not so fraught with expectation and prejudice. Though we are rarely overtly persecuted, we are invisibly undermined, expected to be quiet, studious, and deferential, while being overlooked by media and corporate interests, the twin pillars of America. Yet this very invisibility can prove an asset to the writer who stands silently on the fringes, observing the orbit of human behavior. And having two cultures from which to draw a sense of self can be ultimately redemptive. One purpose of this compilation is to celebrate that duality. What we found so exciting while sifting through the work we received was how varied it was: No one theme dominated, no style resembled another, no aesthetic sense was more prevalent than any other. We received such an overflow of strong voices that choosing among them was very difficult; these writers delve, not only into the question of what it means to inherit a heritage, but into what it means to embody the full meditative, lusty, gendered, loving, bemused, raging, mystical spectrum of human experience. Here, the English language--capacious enough to hold the consciousnesses of so many diverse personalities--is both vehicle and terrain. That is not to say that the reverberation of other cultures and tongues is absent. On the contrary, the grain of another land--no matter how many generations past--has been digested and turned into sustenance in the minds of these writers. The translations, forged in the fire of contemporaneity, aim for tone--what Robert Lowell singled out as the crucial element of poetry--assuring that the poet's music in the original can thrive in a foreign language. [See Poetry/Translations. Eds.] In the poetry and fiction gathered here, relics from a place not this place abound. It is those details--along with the exquisite deployment of craft--which make this body of work coherent. One thrills to see such talent steadfastly refuse to dissolve in the "big melting pot." Every culture needs its scribes. Many in this group of writers have been nurtured and guided by the Asian American Writers' Workshop (AAWW) which is celebrating its tenth year anniversary this September. Ten years ago, a small group of writers seeking an outlet for their creativity--as well as a community in which to share their writing--but finding no satisfying niche, began their own casual workshop which occasionally met at the Magnolia Café in the East Village. They began to distribute flyers around New York City, inviting Asian American writers to join in on their meetings. The mailing address of the "workshop " was actually the home address of Curtis Chin, one of the organizers. The others were Bino Realuyo, Christina Chiu and Marie Lee. The need to write prompted this group to invite friends and organize readings. Word gradually spread. The group eventually applied for a grant as a non-profit organization, and funding from the New York Community Trust put the Asian American Writers' Workshop on the literary map. Initially the Workshop shared office space with A. Magazine, an Asian American lifestyles magazine on Elizabeth Street, but in 1995, it moved to a basement office space on St. Mark's Place. It was there that the Asian American Bookseller began offering every known title by every Asian American writer, creating, for the first time, the Asian American writing genre. The Bookseller showcased journals such as The Asian Pacific American Journal (APA Journal), spearheaded by Christina Chiu, which continues to play a significant role in empowering emerging Asian Americans writers. Eric Gamalinda, Eileen Tabios, and Tina Chang stepped forward to lend their publishing expertise to the APA Journal and to Ten, the literary news magazine of the AAWW. Soon afterward, the AAWW became its own small press, publishing anthologies, such as Flippin', Contours of the Heart, Quiet Fire, and Watermark, among others. As the publishing aspect of the Workshop grew, so did its public face. A local reading series begun in 1995 included writers such as John Yau, Arthur Sze, Luis H. Francia, Luis Cabalquinto, Nick Carbo, Timothy Liu, Jessica Hagedorn, and Kimiko Hahn, some of whom are included in these pages. A nomadic reading series dubbed "The Literary Caravan" was started to allow writers to travel to universities nationwide to share their work with college students. A public performance series initiated by Gary San Angel staged acts such as the highly acclaimed all-male performance group, Peeling the Banana. CreateNow was conceived a year later by the Arts-in-Education department to reach out to high school students through writing workshops and by connecting students to established writers. In 1998, The Asian American Literary Awards were established, signaling what Luis H. Francia has called an act of "interpreting the term 'Asian American' and its implied dimensions with the long-overdue fullness and inclusiveness that it demands." The beginning of the millennium marked yet another milestone: The AAWW moved from its dim basement office on St. Marks Place to a large, sunny loft overlooking Korea Town. The move was due largely to the efforts of Quang Bao, current Managing Director. From the mere seed of an idea to a fully functional non-profit organization, the AAWW is now accomplishing what it set out to do: The Workshop supports, honors, and provides a community for Asian American literature. <www.aaww.org> Louis Althusser, the French Marxist, believed that "I" am not "me" through any willful self-engagement, but rather, through the shared discourse that "I" must implicitly accept in order to communicate and even to exist. This collection marks the celebration of the decade-long existence of an organization committed to making Asian American voices heard. The poem, stories, and translations herein represent the kind of shared discourse that each of us, consciously or not, Asian or not, participates in every day. These writers' skilled explorations of crucial issues, such as how to deal with existence in a dimension of stereotype while still creating a liberated world through imagination, go a long way towards defining what it means to be Asian, yet American. We extend our congratulations to the Asian American Writers' Workshop for ten years of abundance and our thanks to the editors of Big City Lit. Guest Editors: Tina Chang Rafiq Kathwari Ravi Shankar [We have scheduled this feature for a public reading and recording session on Thursday, October 4 at the AAWW loft at 16 West 32nd Street in Midtown. Eds.] ~ . ~ Photo: © 2001 George Kunze   Ghazal Agha Shahid Ali Depths of Fields Nassau Lights Luis Cabalquinto Ay. Que Dolo! Nick Carbo Measure Brian Komei Dempster Nocturne Monica Ferrell Dogless in Manhattan Luis H. Francia Adam's Dream Tiffany Fung Boys of My Generation Mondo Grass Eric Gamalinda Ruin Eugene Gloria Blended Luisa A. Igloria Neon Vancouver (excerpt) Paolo Javier The Korean Community Garden Sue Kwock Kim White Coral on Black Lava Jeffrey Leong Ladies Dying Timothy Liu The Dolls' Quarter In the City of Pale Deer and Resin Scent Miho Nonako In the City of Pale Deer and Resin Scent Miho Nonako Hunger Jon Pineda Made in India, Immigrant Song #3 Purvi Shah Lobed Bowl with Black Glaze and White Scalloped Rim Arthur Sze Tercets from The Book of Revelation Eileen Tabios Cricket The Secret Life of Trees Barbara Tran   ~ . ~ . ~ Ghazal Agha Shahid Ali Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar --Laurence Hope Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell tonight before you agonize him in farewell tonight? Pale hands that once loved me beside the Shalimar: Whom else from rapture's road will you expel tonight? Those "Fabrics of Cashmere--" "to make Me beautiful--" "Trinket" -- to gem -- "Me to adorn --How--tell"--tonight? I beg for haven: Prisons, let open your gates-- A refugee from pity seeks a cell tonight. Lord, cried out the idols, Don't let us be broken: Only we can convert the infidel tonight. In the heart's veined temple all statues have been smashed. No priest in saffron's left to toll its knell tonight. And I, Shahid, only am escaped to tell thee-- God sobs in my arms. Call me Ishmael tonight. (Prior publ.: A Country Without a Post Office (W.W. Norton, 1997). Reprinted with permission.) (Agha Shahid Ali is on the poetry faculty of the University of Utah and of Warren Wilson College. His ninth collection of poems, Rooms Are Never Finished (W. W. Norton), is scheduled for distribution in Fall 2001.)   ~. ~ Depths of Fields Luis Cabalquinto I walk some hundred paces from the old house where I was raised, where many are absent now, and the ricefields sweep into view: here where during home leaves I'm drawn to watch on evenings such as this, when the moon is fat and much given to the free spending of its rich cache of light which transmutes all things: it changes me now, like someone restored to the newness of his life. Note the wind's shuffle in the crown of tall coconut trees; the broad patches of moon-flecked water -- freshly-rowed with seedlings; the grass huts of croppers, windows framed by the flicker of kerosene lamps: an unearthly calm pervades all that is seen. Beauty unreserved holds down a country's suffering. Disclosed in this high-pitched hour: a long-held secret displaced by ambition and need, a country boy's pained enchantment with his hometown lands which remains intact in a lifetime of wanderings. As I look again, embraced by depths of an old loneliness, I'm permanently returned to this world, to the meanings it has saved for me. If I die now, in the grasp of childhood fields, I'll miss nothing.   ~. Nassau Lights Luis Cabalquinto We are conscripted by the moonlight as Witnesses to its fine postulates on the kinship Between our human skin and this earthly sand: It calls out to other lights in the mind. We see a starry night's outstretched hand In the quick outline of a gesture, that of a lover. We get punchy in the sudden joy of this freedom From the closed-teeth watching of ourselves. And now we look at the glitter of a wave approach: One more light to join us, to bear witness. (Luis Cabalquinto lives in Manhattan but divides his writing time between New York City and his birthplace in Magarao, Philippines. His new book of poetry, Bridgeable Shores, will be released by Kaya Press in September, 2001.)   ~ . ~ Ay, Que Dolo! Nick Carbo Dona Josefina has thrown my goat out onto the calle El Fez-- Ay! The menu of pain is as big as a queen-sized aha umbrella. The lolita from the barrio chino licks the sellos and then my luau-- there is a hint of ajo from Ab-derabad, with periodos of adages and lapis lazuli. I have known the fonda of Dona Josefina, the jetty of her hips, under the veil of her mild protests where pigs and lox do mix in a yodel of ah-do-do-dah. The lolita from the barrio chino is a rider of net gains and bronze sea snakes-- she holds a baroque club in one hand and ma of mana from a mouse in the other. (Nick Carbo, author of two books of poetry, El Grupo McDonald's (1995) and Secret Asian Man (2000), has won fellowships in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts (1997) and the New York Foundation for the Arts (1999).)   ~ . ~ Measure Brian Komei Dempster Uncle, did I come to see you as only half a man with your shaved head and lead blanket, half the weight, half the breath, half the smile, only half of you looking at the doctor who loaded up the transparency, used a ruler to show the tumor, its increments, this angle, 70%, that angle, 50%, back at half again, in this case, your chance of living. 1 set of x-rays needed, a 2nd opinion, a 3rd, each arbitrary as the 4 vertebrae swarmed by the 4,123 diseased cells, the 7,000 blood count, 5,126 swollen lymphs, and the fact that there were 3 doctors, 6 orderlies, 9 interns, only made calculations trickier. 2 options: 48 weeks of radiation or 12 hours under the knife. 3 pills a day after either treatment. Within 1 year a 50% chance to live. A 250,000 deductible to cover costs after the 8th week. 1 oxygen tank and cane for full recovery. The 1 opaque streak vanishing from the transparency. The 2 cigars we smoked to celebrate. Our 1-hour tennis match, the score 6-3 because you didn't want any measure of pity, my 5 aces, your 4 double faults, no strategy against the 3 opaque streaks growing back into the transparency. The 29 steps to your room where I tied the white laces of your gown. The 1 tuna fish sandwich I brought you Sunday, the 7th, at 8 p.m., 2 bites while you looked out the window at 2 sparrows darting back and forth, warbling atop 1 branch, a single pine cone falling. (Prior publ.: Quarterly West. Reprinted with permission.) (Brian Komei Dempster's poems have appeared in The Asian Pacific American Journal, Crab Orchard Review, Green Mountains Review, Ploughshares, and Quarterly West.)   ~ . ~ Nocturne Monica Ferrell Hum as the day goes under: it's bats' wings. Opening a closet door, the stale air Gusts out. Don't answer the telephone. Don't think of unshuttering your mouth Lest the moths boil out. Rustle through Plastic sacks; they're all empty but One ripped snatch of horsehair, Balding patch torn from my tongue. Along the street, dead cars creep Like drugged bugs, while in the carved doorway A man and his girl nuzzle their death-match. February, and we're supposed to be glad That it's almost over. I will be in Tangier I will face east, I will face east-- I am a paper snake some fakir is charming Out of a dirty hat. (Monica Ferrell is a 2001 "Discovery" / THE NATION winner. Her poems have appeared in the Paris Review and the Boston Review.)   ~ . ~ Dogless in Manhattan Luis H. Francia sometimes a belief in god overcomes my dog over his face something steals rearranging it a hand perhaps or the brush of a wing, invisible to faithless me deliberately he pads by his bowl fastidiously laid out with chunks of red meat the daily communion of his dog's life my desperate desire to please ignored, my offer once more to explore the profane mysteries of our neighborhood spurned my dog, my dog, why have you forsaken me? he stops by the open door and fixes his eyes on an other in his gaze understanding leashed to humility, and a devotion far surpassing that to his earthly master he regards me briefly, a hint of sadness for my man's fate for he who bites has been bit becomes Dog Almighty still in the same skin black still and white his paws only a fool cannot see the grace upon him somewhere light swallows up holes time and revelation pass he drops the bone of faith reverts to playing pooch, the well-rehearsed role of friend has nothing changed then? so it seems. and yet when we go out into the day's waning to play, I sense a lift higher as he forays in air like an angel after a stick thrown at improbable angle he looks at me now with compassion, pats my hand with his head, tail motions all's well reasserting normalcy engulfing me in his love I know beyond a seer's certainty that he will die for me wanting me to arrive at that sacred place this moment this dusk this spring this life of ordinary ache and extraordinary music (Luis H. Francia's most recent work is Eye of the Fish: A Personal Archipelago (Kaya Press, 2001), part memoir, part political and cultural critique of the Philippines.)   ~ . ~ Adam's Dream Tiffany Fung I awoke and found it truth. This life of sensations-- I scarcely remember counting Upon any happiness, nothing startled me Beyond the cold moment. My mind in its infancy was full of heat And fever, widening speculation. I dreamt of a help-mate Twinning this air and space with me, Rich in the simple worship of a day. I remained in a mist, my unguessed fate Spread as a veil between You and me. Awake, I run away from what was in my head (No leisure to brood over you) Some leaning towards a climate-curse. The balance of good and evil lies limbed In the leaves—something real entered the world; Pretty is not the word, but I witnessed The last creature to leave Your hand. Identity of every animal Began to press upon me: Try sitting with your wings furled for months. My mind slept almost over-occupied, An artist of nouns will dream of nothing less; My imagination, horribly vivid about you. Where else could I look for consolation? The ache in my side settles to absence. Still weak in mind, my knowledge of contrast Falters—if I should not recover— Will all my unnamed faults be pardoned? Out of the shadow and into the light, She walks this garden for the first time; I cannot recall whose child I am. (Tiffany Fung is pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing at Columbia University. [See the May 2001 feature, "Degrees of Affinity," which includes Fung's work, as the only student contributor alongside Alfred Corn, Lucie Brock-Broido, William Wadsworth, David Yezzi, and other distinguished faculty or alumni from the Columbia Writing Division. Eds.])   ~ . ~ Boys of My Generation Eric Gamalinda One went to war with his own people, learned how to assemble an M-16 even before he learned how to masturbate. Another went to business school, and then to London, and another married several actresses, one of them young enough to be his daughter. One became a newscaster on TV, and one crossed the borders of Italy on foot, to work as a toilet cleaner in a palazzo in Rome. And I became a poet so I could put my bitterness to good use. So I would have nothing to do with the government of humans, so I would remember till old age the sour aftertaste of illicit love. A decade into the new millennium we will hold a congress to determine what we've done. We will come from all over the earth, we will remark how everyone has changed and remained the same. One will say, I killed a hundred people in one night. Another will say, I made love in all the possible positions known to man. And another, I ate wild berries and the soles of my shoes. And another, my mother died in my arms. And another, we waited and waited, but the end of the world never came.   ~ . Mondo Grass Eric Gamalinda You take your mondo grass from Japan and plant it All over the lawn of a museum for contemporary Art. You take your tobacco farmers from Ilocos And make them plant pineapple in Hilo. Crossbreed hapa and haole and see What kind of pidgin they'll write love poems in. Pollen are like people, they migrate and fertilize And sometimes they make us sneeze. Every second a million cells in your body die. Too much endorphin in the brain is not Such a bad thing. But too much happiness Is like too much sugar, lethal in the long run. Coffee makes you remember, water makes you Forget. You take a poem you wrote in your blood Twenty years ago and strike out all the lines. Nothing's left but punctuation and a freeway Of erasures. That's it: only the open road. The blood dried long ago. Poems are dead things, A slow process of decomposition. If they don't Decay, something terrible has gone wrong. (Eric Gamalinda's collection of poems, Zero Gravity (Alice James Books, 1998), won the Asian American Literary Award for 2000. He is currently working on a collection of poems called Amigo Warfare.)   ~ . ~ Ruin Eugene Gloria My beautiful, unlucky brother is a deadbeat a scofflaw, a veteran of foreign wars. When the Viet Cong god sent him back to us, my mother prayed to the Virgin in repentance for her threat to disown him when he considered Canada instead of the draft. In Khe Sanh my brother bivouacked through rice paddies, though I picture him in rubber slippers along rice terraces in the Ifugao, in villages beneath a corrugated sky. When darkness shut into the dark, he spied the enemy through his nightscope, marching like a trail of black ants, loaded down with light mortars, scant provisions, and their wounded. After his tour, I found a snapshot I wasn't supposed to see-- a captive boy, his ankles held up by a smiling soldier and another slicing off his balls. When my brother had arrived at his manhood, he called me. It was after the neighborhood boys were gathered before Goteng, a part-time healer and collector of discarded glass. Circumcised, my brother slumped on his bed, his cock wrapped in guava leaf, and bleeding. In his hand was a gift, the blue marble, the one he named the Conqueror. Once there was a bridge that sagged to the river and beckoned him to drown with all his gear. And all the women he has ever loved would take up his bags and bless his failures, unpack his last clean shirts--white like his mestizo skin and delicate as his sisters'. Beautiful, unlucky brother, sleepwalking amid the ruins, I call you back to your desires along the rim of terraces, back to the shallow water flourishing with young rice. (Eugene Gloria's first collection of poems is, Drivers at the Short-Time Motel (Penguin). He is a recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, an artist grant from the San Francisco Art Commission, 96 Inc.'s Bruce P. Rossley Literary Award, and the Poetry Society of America's George Bogin Memorial Award.)   ~ . ~ Blended Luisa A. Igloria An article in the U.S. News & World Report on the rise of stepfamilies gives ours this name, as if the writer took his inspiration from the plastic cup of yogurt he ate at his desk, barely swallowing as he clicked away at the keyboard. He may have been rushing to beat his deadline, which could explain the use of this metaphor that too easily conjures the smoothed-over folds of flavor, ascorbic balanced with the sweet and flecked with bits of real fruit you can dig up from the bottom, under a blanket of vanilla. The faces on the cover of the magazine, it's true, could be replaced by ours. How long did it take them to get comfortable about things like farting in each other's presence? How long before a child stops watching from the corner of her eye, the mother kissed on the mouth or nuzzled from behind, at the sink? How long before she can hold out her arms and say "daddy" without thinking, rehearsing all night in her head? Perhaps the fairy tales are all to blame, having given us the witch with her painted-on smile and shiny poison apple; the woman in the forest, her sugared cages, her dreams of children roasting in the oven. Bluebeard has his locked tower of dead ex-wives; when she figures out which key fits in which key- hole, in which door, his new wife discovers them swimming in tubs of blood redder than maraschino cherries. Even I had nightmares at three, after I confessed to scribbling on the lampshade with ink, and my mother threatened to un- birth me. Shadows blur, cross our courtyard, blending with the light. How long before every refusal to finish what's on the plate, every verbalized complaint about terrible parenthood, about whose turn it is to wash dishes or why it's time to go to bed, ceases to be a personal attack? How long before it gets easier to sight the quick, spontaneous smile or wave, cast anchor at the small, bright islands, both buoyant and sinkable? I think of how we each make our way, of how the undercurrents teem and swirl with all the languages and weathers that tangle, always palpably, at our seams. (Luisa A. Igloria's sixth collection of poems is Songs For The Beginning Of The Millennium (De La Salle University Press, Manila,1999). Recipient of many awards, including a Fulbright Fellowship, she teaches at The Institute for the Study Of Minority Issues at Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia.)   ~ . ~ Neon Vancouver (excerpt) Paolo Javier ii. Inertia Tackled at the E & B Hawking Quantums, Serotonin Levels boost the pair's reduction on romance when coffee arrives amid stacked sheets. Suddenly motes contract: 'Stupendous, eh how Terry the Waitress clumps both cups bare, and not flinch! Too old a brew, perhaps? Decades at it dulls the nerves. Regard her mouth's corners, the smeared rouge. But her gait, albeit shaggy, tickles still with the swagger of another day. This late, and she's calling even the trucker gurgling Coke in the back love. How? Hardly insouciance, or inner bravado, especially not with her tilted crown. Silly to honor this place a dead end for her, out of life's shelf she has picked a Bukowski. But were there other poets present?' The pair's undecided so Terry herself orders, 'Always swell to have young folk in here!' The next table's gaunt new immigrant's intent on his eggs. 'Ga-dam! Is hot!' and 'A refill, please,' dipping his jellied toast counter-clockwise in the yolk. 'As I postulated he would,' brays the lankier one, his bible of a textbook unfurled as their chicken wings turn crisp in a wok gripped with ease. (Paolo Javier's poems are forthcoming in the Asian Pacific American Journal, Prism International, and Tinfish. He teaches at New York University.)   ~ . The Korean Community Garden Sue Kwock Kim In the vacant lot nobody else bothered to rebuild, dirt scumbled for years with syringes and dead weed husks, tire shreds and smashed beer bottles, the first green shoots of spring spike through bull brier, redroot, pokeweed, sow thistle, an uprising of grasses whose only weapons are themselves. Blades slit through scurf. Spear-tips spit dust as if thrust from the other side. They spar and glint. How far will they climb, grappling for light? Inside I see coils of fern-bracken called kosari, bellflower cuts named toraji in the old country. Knuckles of ginger and mugwort dig upward, shoving through mulched soil until they break the surface. Planted by immigrants, they survive, like their gardeners, ripped from their native plot. What is it they want, driving and driving toward a foreign sky? How not to mind the end we'll come to? I imagine the garden underground, where gingko and ailanthus grub cement rubble. They tunnel slag for foothold. Wring crumbs of rot for water. Of shadows, seeds foresung as Tree of Heaven & Silver Apricot in ancient Mandarin, their roots tangle now with plum or weeping willow, their branches mingling with tamarack or oak. I love how nothing in these furrows grows unsnarled, nothing stays unscathed. How last year's fallen stalks, withered to pith, cleave to this year's crocus bulbs, each infant knot burred with bits of garbage or tar. Fist to fist with tulips, iris, selving and unselving glads, they work their metamorphoses in loam pocked with rust-flints, splinters of rodent skull a ground so mixed, so various that everything is born of what it's not. Who wouldn't want to flower like this? How strangely they become themselves, this gnarl of azaleas and roses-of-Sharon, native to both countries, blooming as if drunk with blossoming. Green buds suck and bulge. Stem-nubs thicken. Sepals swell and crack their cauls. Lately every time I walk down this street to look through the fence, I'm surprised by something new. Yesterday hydrangea and chrysanthemums burst their calyxes, corolla skins blistering into welts. Today jonquils slit blue shoots from their sheaths. Tomorrow day-lilies and wild asters will flame petals, each incandescent color unlike: sulfur, blood, ice, coral, fire-gold, violet the hue of shaman robes every flower with its unique glint or slant, faithful to each particular. All things lit by what they neighbor but are not, each tint flaring without a human soul, without human rage at its passing. In the summer there will be scallions, mung beans, black sesame, muskmelons, to be harvested into buckets and sold at market. How do they live without wanting to live forever? May I, and their gardeners in the old world, who kill for warring dreams and warring heavens, who stop at nothing, say life and paradise are one. (Sue Kwock Kim is a Stegner Fellow at Stanford. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Paris Review, The Nation, The New Republic, Yale Review, Salmagundi, Threepenny Review, Ploughshares, New England Review. [Work appears with partial edits only. Eds.])   ~ . ~ White Coral on Black Lava Jeffrey Leong (for the graffiti artists of Kona-Kailua, and Cesar Vallejo) If I die, let me first tell you how much I love you, on a Tuesday, heat of unblinking Hawaiian sun burning the fields of pahoehoe and a'a on the Kohala coast. But even before that, how much Mele loves Troy, and Leilani & Keola will be forever, like the chunks of once living coral, calcified shells which housed invertebrate souls, now lie in pure white contrast against the black heart of motionless lava, Mauna Kea's most recent eruption in 1859. Soon, someone may rearrange what I am saying, as easily as stink eye becomes aloha, the inevitable movement of stone statement on glassine banks, so observe the occasional cindered tree, fire-gutted, charred-ember reminder of molten heat now cold. This is what I want to say (temporary good rubbed into the sea salt of life): know white coral on a vast plain of black lava. My message, not offered in Paris on a Thursday while it is raining and with the various bones of my arms rearranged, but here, in Kona, on the biggest of islands, in this sunny place called paradise. (Jeffrey Thomas Leong's poems are forthcoming in The Asian Pacific American Journal and Flyway: A Literary Review. He lives in San Leandro, California. [Work appears unedited. Eds.)   ~ . ~ Ladies Dying Timothy Liu to help the homeless get into shape during daily bible study sexual cycle to rebuild self-confidence far beyond that figure others crave a destitute white habit called upon to drive two grams of alcohol from here to the other side as crash the press outside Le Petit Rameau where speeding paparazzis race down glossy spreads to be superfit a treadmill struggle some doctors call an ideal body-weight disorder in a jar of peaches exploding in some pantry singling out a bottom-feeding flack cashing in on a sitcom stashed inside a princess floating down a hot Venetian canal where hunks caught flaunting cock for cash cavort outside a hellish hotel fire rooftop rescuers lowering the rope on floozies whose Latin would make us lurch like a limited edition collector plate ringed in 24 karat gold an heirloom fit to serve reduced-fat cheese while a doll mulls over going under the knife distracted by nay-sayers who launch a streamlined road to riches speed-obsessed by limo love hell-bent- for-leather backseat joyride requiring liquid asset rent-free royal residence or a flag-draped corpse the cortege's centerpiece the biggest selling single surpassing Bing's "White Christmas" multi-million dollar candle in the wind riding on a flower-bedecked hearse all of us wanting to touch her gold her Paris in the purse like a La Gioconda devoured in the Louvre by auto-focus flash frame by frame a hand-held lens zooming-in on Assisi monks pinned by chunks of Giotto in the latest quake "La donna è mobile" wafting through— (Timothy Liu's latest book of poems is Hard Evidence (Talisman House, 2001). His new work is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Tin House, Triquarterly and Yale Review. He lives in Hoboken, New Jersey.)   ~ . ~ The Dolls' Quarter Miho Nonako It is strange how people mistake my hyacinth For an imitation. The sound of rain orphans My flower; its petals recurve like false lashes In my grey room. You will never be able to see This star as I saw it. You don't understand: It is like the heart of a heartless flower, says Nadja, quite removed from her growing insanity I can only admire. Your neck smells of rain; When the world is wet, I smell distant things As if they were part of my body all this time. The artist next door makes glass eyes that blink At a marble's click, puts a lilac flame in each iris.   ~ . In the City of Pale Deer and Resin Scent Miho Nonako I am uneasy whenever a book opens By itself on a windless day, and outside the window, All clouds have lost their roots. It is forbidden to pin a butterfly on the wall At one's desire. Already, its wings have mapped Most of the streets in the city Where the beasts and people walk Slow-pulsed and free of shadows. When I awake, you are dozing on and off At the Weather Station in a different city In the time I need you most, you cast an anthelion on some sky With your fingers. My fear won't ever wake you, And from one world to the other, Butterflies carry ill omens to forecast Another white rainbow between the two cities. (Miho Nonako is pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing at Columbia University.)   ~ . ~ Hunger Jon Pineda The morning after their son is born, he goes home to feed the cats. He drives through Ghent, with its thick Victorians, and crosses the tracks To the edge of Riverview where the same-styled homes stand, Though the paint peeling from each shutter makes them seem ruined Somehow. At the stoplight, he watches a transvestite slowly cross the street. Her body hunched, protective, she is nursing a cup of coffee and the steam That rises now, the soul of it, its warmth vanishes in front of her face. He thinks of their son, newborn, sealing his lips to his mother's breast, And it is this thought that he carries across the Lafayette Bridge, the cold Water stirring underneath. At home, the cats lick their bowls clean. (Jon Pineda is a recipient of a 2000 Virginia Commission for the Arts grant in poetry. Recent work has appeared in the Asian Pacific American Journal, the Literary Review, and Tilting The Continent: An Anthology of Southeast Asian Writing (New River Press, 2000.))   ~ . ~ Made in India, Immigrant Song #3 Purvi Shah (a note from a New York City streetwalker) Some worker in the sweat of Madras, some former weaver from Kashmir, some hand in Ahmadabad's dust, has been pounding iron again. The New York streets swell; multihued tracks glide over the flat steel disks which offer entry into the city's interior lairs. The writing seeps through our soles though few fathom the signature, "Made in India." These alien metal coins, transported like my birth, mask a labyrinth of tunnels in a city where origin and destination are confused. Sometimes I wear the stamp on myself; sometimes I feel the wear of a surrounding world erase the fine etchings. Here the imprint of India is a traveler's mutation: the body's chamber is made hole, the skin not smooth, circular, but cloaking a bumpy network of channels, spirit mobile, expanding. (Purvi Shah's poems have appeared in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Brooklyn Review, Crab Orchard Review, Descant, Weber Studies, Contours of the Heart, and are forthcoming in BlackWater Review, Many Mountains Moving, and Natural Bridge.)   ~ . ~ Lobed Bowl with Black Glaze and White Scalloped Rim Arthur Sze Turning from the obituary page, he hears a screw tighten, recalls a dead sparrow on a greenhouse floor. The mind can be dipped in a vat when you slice an eggplant, sharpen a pencil, shave. He woke slowly as light sank through the skylight, brightening the bedroom. He recalls running his tongue from her breast to her armpit as she shivered and ached with pleasure. An elder holds an eagle feather, wafts cedar smoke, taps a woman on her shoulders. He wants a mind as pure as a ten-lobed bowl with black glaze and white scalloped rim. A broad-tailed hummingbird whirs in the air-- and in a dew drop on a mimosa leaf is the day's angular momentum. (Arthur Sze has published seven collections of poems, including The Redshifting Web (Copper Canyon, l998) and The Silk Dragon: Translations from the Chinese (Copper Canyon Press, 2001). He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts.) [See Sze's translations in the accompanying section. Eds.]   ~ . ~ Tercets from The Book of Revelation Eileen Tabios (after Rupert Thomson's "The Book of Revelation") Part I How does the air come to pulse like a muscle As if your scent lingered before your arrival How does the night come to press and smother As if a fresh wound must accompany a revelation Church bells ring over a dark street to fracture glass Or was it a childhood memory evoking how light becomes distant A fine, silvery mist descends on a wall, a city You reach me by penetrating past a train's smoke and whistle Damp hair clings to the nape of your neck How can the cause for an absence lose relevance How many stories do we deny to obviate recitation How do we pretend no boats mutter along the salted, wet dock How did I give up my child for an imagined affair A pine forest breathes for me behind an empty house He looked happy before meeting a burglar's intimacy You can reach me by noticing how trees shiver by the edge of a road How a sun flattens the water of a grey canal How does release from what you love become "unequivocal freedom" Sunglasses hang against her breastbone from a silver chain No limits surround the purple sheen to Montenegro lilies Afterwards why do you never hold me How do I find the necessary vein I must mine   Part II How does one see significance in brackets studding a wall Or be claimed through a stranger's tattoo "I want to see you again to know I was not dreaming" A church, a girl, a cloud, a fragmented tune -- of what are they coordinates Children cluster within a tree's branches like birds, fruit, pollen A shirt cuff so white it forms an independent image It has never been my desire for men to take second place I always wake before the alarm clock begins to irradiate A man weeps tonight with the father of a schizophrenic son How does one offend by innocently asking "Are you happy?" In Zanzibar fruit bats fragment a room's dimness Upon meeting, you knew to suggest "Alchemy needs your silence" Wildflowers override the trenches of a battlefield There are days when the world's kindness forgives pastis imbibed at zinc bars A man blows a saxophone until the moon turns to butter To approximate immortality through the art of doing nothing Burying stories I cannot reveal within those I can Her hair offers the scent of firecrackers reaching for the Milky Way "Put it in me now," she whispers When he wants to protect me he holds my wrist The air pulses like a muscle attentive and fraught (Poet, fiction writer, editor, critic and publisher, Eileen Tabios is a grape farmer in St. Helena, Napa Valley, California.)   ~ . ~ Cricket Barbara Tran At night, I lie close to my husband hoping to camouflage myself against his body as if when he is dreaming he might mistake me for a cricket on the blade of his back. Cricket and blade together sway in the wind, thin as a breath, both rooted to the land. I dream of being alone in this field. It has been years since I have been able to be with my husband at his whim. And now I carry another wish-- the result of the banishment of our children to their room. Alone with me, he has nothing to say and so must touch. We will have seven come this August.   ~ . The Secret Life of Trees Barbara Tran Why do they shed their leaves in an annual toast to the shades of fire? How do they go from Don't-look-back green to Whom-do-you-love orange? Is there an equivalent warming within them, even as the wind gusts and whistles through our sleeves, rattles the trees' bare limbs? Perhaps it's like love: a weary bird alighting on a steady branch, the waking of a new part of your body, the way birds know the difference between the movement of man and the stirring of wind. (Barbara Tran, co-editor of Watermark: Vietnamese American Prose & Poetry, is the recipient of the MacDowell Colony’s Freund Fellowship and the Pushcart Prize. Robert Wrigley selected her manuscript for the Tupelo Press chapbook contest, to be published in 2002.) ~ . ~ . ~