The No One Poems: From Thirty West Publishing

 

 

The No One Poems

will be published by 

Thirty West Publishing

 

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…)

 

Li Bai

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.

 

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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