by Xue Di

     translated by Hil Anderson and Forrest Gander

Your body, a tree
Its roots tangled
In the raw center of an open wound
My palms move tentatively
When we meet, it is a felling
Your face lights up like a fresh wedge
Of tree exposing the rings around your eyes,
Agonies recorded in the blanks between lines
Your sigh is a flock of birds
Nesting in the branches of your
youth.  Your eyes
are like insects curled
into fissures
In my heart’s
Darkness I gaze at you time and time
Again, trembling

DIZZY

“Dizzy” is a poem expressing the feeling of a separation of spirit between two lovers.  Even though they are in love, they cannot communicate through their hearts, only their bodies.  One’s existence has changed the other’s unique character and damaged its identification.  The lack of heart communication is the unfortunate theme of this poem.

by Xue Di

translated by Hil Anderson and Forrest Gander

I don’t remember that whistle.

Birch bark ripped away by sweaty hands.
Broken from its mother’s bones,
an infant’s body is luminescent with blood.
Life, whistling a song both spontaneous and
unendurable, leads us into two rows of gnashing teeth.

I don’t remember that whistle.

Something larger than life tears it
into bloody ribbons while it hangs naked
from the cliff face, batting its eyes in the wind.
The song is always a half step behind.
Beacon lights flicker across the water.

I don’t remember that whistle.

I’m soaked beneath the swarming gulls,
chewing on the dark taste of my life.
And then my four limbs open gracefully —
long, thin, circling blades.

THE WHISTLE

Who is blowing that “whistle?”  Fate?  The distance between our birth and death?  A stranger or God?  We all know that in sports, when a whistle starts blowing, the runners start competing.  In this poem, the poet imagines that
the force is blowing a whistle, and the poet’s life starts falling apart.  Solitude, suffering and distant death is like a windmill, spinning in the wing.

by John Brandi

Warm colors of shimmering stones under satin eddies. The stones stand still, but as the sun moves, back and forth they go, shifting shape and color as shadows warp and weave. Where do we go with our last breath, what is there after we pass? Pundits, scientists, troubadours, butterflies, terns, hummingbirds haven’t come up with an answer. Humans wouldn’t listen to a cicada’s report anyway. Too busy riding the teeter-totter of the market, projecting heavens and hells, loading guns, ducking rockets. Think I’ll take a walk upstream, cool my ears at the source. Why not let the dead be dead, stones be stones, the water flow? Sometimes as a kid I’d pretend dying. Flat on my back, in spurs and chaps, eyes to sky, I’d leave the human realm, fade into a larger sphere, nothingness at the core. No matter how tall I stood, when I was down in the dust, I was “out.” Small enough to fit into the universe again. Today I watch water course around smooth granite, curl into itself, regain shape. Into the reeds it carries my reflection, while steady in the current

                                    facing the water’s flow
a silver minnow
perfectly still. 

                                                                                        Taos, NM

by John Brandi

From a canyon labyrinth comes a three-dimensional howl, a rhapsodic vocal blaze. Daybreak, and old Mr. Cool is heralding it in, his voice revved to greet the first quiver of light filling these cold December cliffs. His is a cacophonous laugh, a wheel of sound textures, electric circuitry of Shiva’s dance pulling matter from emptiness, recycling it through the universe, returning it to the ever-regenerative void. I rest my eyes in gin-clear air as the lone crooner goes backstage, then reappears, family in tow, trotting quick-rhyme choreograph of gone-crazy barks, operatic laughs, bubbled free verse. A scrambled time-signature, vacant pause, fresh rise of chortled wheeze — all for free in this grand ole mountain opry. With whiskered intelligence coyotes loop through ravines, eyes flashing. They bark, warm the soul, follow musical ridgelines with sovereign impulse, a soprano hop, a chiming wail. A down-home gospel choir belting it out in a Mississippi chapel rocks  me  out of my seat, but it’s old Mr. Cool  who  converts me.

                                    Daybreak —
coyote’s Charlie Parker
impromptu.

                                                                                    Río Chama, NM