Chen-ou Liu - 2
Selected Haiku and Tanka...
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brown spots
on my graduation photo ... my hands too a crow's cry flies into darkness ... alone with myself the texture of a sex worker's lips Valentine's night ❧ winter mist fat phobia weighing on her mind twin kites soar high in the sky ... a pair of eyes looking down on my childhood dream ❧ winter twilight an old man and his dog share the shadow the slap of flesh hitting flesh distant sirens a line of men on the wall-to-wall carpet the six-year-old in a mariachi outfit sings The Star-Spangled Banner blood-stained lily... I lock her secret in a haiku ❧ smell of silence... a whirlwind of snowflakes on our way home Toronto skyscrapers shrouded in haze Taipei memories autumn twilight a crow's fly filling the spaces between his words ❧ |
he said, she said
lingering in the room... twilight deepens between the blueness of sky and sea girl on a surfboard his day punctuated by the beeps of a machine ... cicadas cry ❧ I raise my husky voice, I'm a poet ... the word useless like a moth flying around my heart red butterfly ... her name slips off my tongue in a whisper ❧ his dead wife's photo... cigarette smell lingers on his bony hand a white butterfly flying from branch to branch thoughts of my ex inside the church the congregation praying under Jesus' gaze two Romani women in the trash-littered square ❧ summer moonlight on One Thousand and One Nights mother's smell white flight, white fright ... my Chinese roommate practices "l" and "r" before the window as the moonlight slips in I scribble down today's first line memories rising like bubbles from the mud of my mind ❧ |
the steady patter
of rain on the roof ... winter solstice unlit votives in a country church the stale smell threadbare scarecrow in the snowy field its shadow touches mine ❧ in the depth of a winter night I peer into the mirror: Death with half-closed eyes spring tea party the sound of pastry snapping ❧ thoughts of home like the touch of Mother's hand on this cold night I walk alone toward the place I settle now looking out a window across Lake Ontario the aroma of crucian carp soup fills the gaps in my heart (Note: Crucian carp soup is one of China’s favorite dishes) ❧ my muse drones on and on in a monotone voice snowflakes drifting on this hazy spring day thirty-nine and a baby again ... I see myself in the eyes of this MS patient la petite mort ends his underground note winter light ❧ |
