-

NIGHT CHANGES
Night alters sound in ways we can never precisely determine. It is possible our hearing changes with the flight of the sun, but the moon scoffs at this premise. A train rattling across the landscape in the heat of day becomes a musical instrument in the relative silence of night, playing a melody that insuates…
-

CASSIOPEIA
You sit on your self-hewn throne and stare fixedly at the night sky as the clouds gather and dissipate beneath you. Do you even recall why you were cast out condemned to your cell so vast and yet infinitely confining? Does your body remember the touch of his hand the crude hunter who set you…
-

SEOUL NIGHTS
they wander up and down cluttered streets alleys under blazing signs OP.10 Nightclub Club Alaska Hesed Disco streets taped with posters Dancoh Discotheque young men flicking business cards cardboard confetti Venturi “Coffee and Whiskey” neon flashing Bulgari Nigh…
-

MOURNING ASCENDANT
When they lowered my grandmother’s casket into the sodden earth, there wasn’t a dry eye or shoulder, or leg around. Sophie would have gotten a good laugh, her children always too busy for a visit getting soaked to the skin, in a cold, windy downpour, all but me, the one she chose to conduct the…
-

A SIMPLE QUESTION
A woman walks up to me and asks, “can you juggle the salt and pepper shakers?” but I know what she really wants is for me to bind her wounds and drag the sun quickly from the horizon. I pick up two apples and a plum but the plum falls to the floor and rolls…
-

CONTEMPLATING
She stands on the bridge and stares down into the slowly flowing river. She wonders what it might feel like to climb the railing and pushing off, gain flight. The river would welcome her, enfold her, carry her to its heart. She will not leap this day just as she did not the day before,…
-

HARMONY
A young woman steps from the shower and wraps herself in a large blue towel. “I don’t want you to see me,” she says, to the young man standing in the door of the small bathroom, “look away for now.” He reminds her they are married. She says, “One thing has nothing to do with…
-

KANNON’S STATUE
If you meet the Bodhisattva you don’t ask someone to carve the image from your mind. To the carver, she weighs but an ounce and can be carried on his fingertip but try and lift her and you will not be able to move her from her place. All Buddhas are one Buddha but his…
-

AND WHAT IS LEFT BEHIND
She calls them around her bedside but they stand back fearful of the withered ghost hovering on the sheets, until one, eldest, touches her extended hand with a finger as if passed through a flame. I will be leaving soon she tells them, if not tomorrow then a day later and I will take the…
