The No One Poems
will be published by
in April, 2021.
These poems are a selection from the manuscript
Absence: Presence,
influenced by Classical Chinese Poets of the Tang Era (Han Shan, Du Fu, Li Bai, Wang Wei…)
These poems have been previously published in:
American Journal of Poetry
Sky Island Journal
Leaping Clear
Serving House Journal
You can order the chapbook
Here's One for the Road:
Watching a Geminid Meteor Shower with Li Bai
Asteroids whip flammable gas
into flame - brief streaks of light
between seemingly immortal stars.
A brilliant white line scars the night
beneath Orion's belt, across
Eridanus (river of souls), pierces
the mind, mirrors the flash
across a synapse. Messages sent
from before the earth was formed.
Li Bai dove into the moon…
I stand on a stone wall, shivering,
feet cold, watch stone after stone burn
the night sky alive. Anchored to earth,
the mind rides the brief light. Li Bai
stands behind me, drunk, a shade
in the shadow of a pear tree,
his dark eyes on a similar light-shower
fifteen hundred years gone.
Li Bai dove into the moon…
Spontaneous noises - whoops and
sighs - erupt from my mouth after
each flash: the nervous system
recognizing itself…The afterimage
haunts the eye: an eerie black light.
Here, then not here; same as me, as
Li Bai, last poet to hunt after immortality,
knowing the search was futile, a joke;
knowing a life of poetry can be
made in pursuit of that very joke.
Li Bai dove into the moon…
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