changming: 'y' in best canadian poetry (2014)

just received a message that one of my poems titled 'y' has been selected for inclusion in Best Canadian Poetry (2014) - this is the third time for my work to appear in the yearly anthology. the first is 'china charms: nine detours of the yellow river' (2009), and the second 'waiting' (2012). the former was also selected earlier this year for inclusion in the online anthology Poetry in Voice for canadian high school students. such news is always welcome.

so far i have written about a dozen poems all titled 'y.' while everyone of them has been accepted or published already, half of them seem to be well-received.

although i have been widely published by now (more than 1,000 poems in 870 literary journals/anthologies - many of them are prestigious or well recognized - across as many as 30 countries), i cannot find a single press willing to publish my poetry collections, not even in canada, my chosen country! i often feel the irony strongly, but i know my life is one full of paradoxes anyway.

being an author makes me feel happy most of the time: while i have become used or even indifferent to rejections, i always expect some good news to come, and little happy surprises do fall upon me from time to time!

[archived]: Parallel Poems-1 by Changming Yuan ©

Immigration

           

To escape from the tyrannical logic

    Of your mother tongue

You wandered, wandering

        Through earth’s length and breadth

    Subjecting your old self to another syntax

A whole set of grammatical rules

        Strangely new to your lips and tips

    To expand the map of your mind

        Far beyond your home and haven

Yet in the meantime it becomes colonized

        By all the puzzling paradoxes

    Of this chosen language, for example:

        Quicksand can be very slow

        Boxing rings are in fact square

        And a guinea pig is neither a pig

        Nor is it from Guinea

                Like you or me

Bow and Arrow

            (After Longfellow)

           

For a whole decade of

Delays and detours

You have failed after all

To find the golden bow

Yet you still hold this arrow

Close to your heart

Ready to draw it

As straight as a day dream

At the setting summer sun

Sowing after “Digging”

            (after Seamus Heaney)

Above an empty sheet of paper

      With lines like the thin ridges

In an open fallow field

My snug pen squats

      As if waiting in ambush

Below my window, my father’s shaking shadow

      Is shrinking slowly but surely

Into a focus constantly adjusted

      By the noon sun of spring 

As he scatters some strange seeds

      Over the soil like salted brown rice

He has been preparing since last winter

By god, the old man enjoys sowing

Even more than his old man

My grandfather died at the age of 29

            In a hilly village in central china

He had cast every drop of his soiled sweat

      Onto a field not belonging to himself

It is said that he reaped little in autumn

Nor did he really care about reaping

Like a bridegroom planting his plump sperm deep

      In his bride’s virgin field on a mid-summer night

I am now sowing, with my pen

Another Impasse

Writing from Vancouver West

To my former friends in China

I always feel hesitant

Whether to or not to use

The first person singular pronoun

As in ‘I do not really think so!’

Time and time again, they have

Unnecessarily reminded me of 

The biggest difference in language

Between the east and the west:

“There in English you always

Spell your favourite word ‘I’

In big bold italic upper case, however

Here we have really rarely

Employed the word even in poetry”

In their writing practice (probably too long)

They either drop the pronoun or replace it

With many an impersonal thing like:

The present writer, the writing subject

The unlearned, the uncouth one

The old person/body, the little human/one

The trivial/insignificant/unmentionable

The president/manager/[          ] proper

The person per se, or more precisely:

[Your] inferior, [your] subordinate

[Your] stupid husband/brother/son

[Your] foolish wife/sister/daughter

[Your] humble [          ], or less humbly:

As [your] father/mentor/lord…

Instead of standing up for an unmasked person

‘I’ should try to remain hidden like a taboo

In Chinese

Towards a Broader Highway

Is it an old bumpkin again

Driving a jalopy ford pick up

Unable to speed up on a highway

Or some mrs billionaire sitting behind the wheel

Of a s8000 mercedes

Too careful with her fancy life

Somewhere in the front?

Surely there is no accident

No police patrol or even a red light

You fuck, you dumb shit, why do you

Have to drive so stupid slow

On such a gray Saturday evening?

You dumb shit, you shouldn’t do this, people

eager to press horns on you, to zigzag, to

Switch on and off their highbeams to protest

Against you originating such snail traffic

All of us have to drive at this speed you set

Even tho a red toyota cannot wait to make love tonight

A blue mac to have a good beer all by himself

And a white shadow to meet her death by the weekend

You fuck, blocking this long single-laned traffic

If only I were driving a crazy tank or a frenzy bulldozer

That I can crash your stupid soul, crush your snail car

And clear the way to my destiny in the twilight

Dancing with Crane

            (after May Swenson’s “Sleeping with Boa”)

I show her how to move her steps

But she’s much too timid

Worse still, she cannot coordinate with my movements

And

Although she dances with me, to an unheard melody

It’s her own music she’s dancing to

She likes the way I hold her

And

Even lets me kiss her shoulder from time to time

so richly white and velvety

But she always keeps me at bill’s length

Each time I come closer

She backs off with a glaring scream

What have I done so wrong?

What is in her mind?

Jumping off the stage

She shows her best, which is a scarlet crest

Like plum petals blown onto the wall of west

I beg her to return

And

So she did, but only to depart from me again

Outside the spotlight

She begins to beat her wide wings against my blue wishes

Her eyes sparkling, as if saying to me

I have my neck and legs

Both too thin and too long to be your partner here

In this cage-like hall

And

Worse still, she’s much too timid

Passengers

I am the type you are supposed to despise

Dark-haired

Yellowish-skinned

Smaller in size and duller in personality

More of a herbivore

I speak aloud in tongue

I eat noisily with bamboo sticks

I appear everywhere like locusts

I have recently been wanted by the editing authority

When the sun gets me

I am a dream walker

Now I am sitting beside you

In the same class

So whether you keep your eyes open or not

You can feel my warm shadow

Until we touch down

My breaths will invade

Your private space

My chanting will beat your ear drums

While you pursue your dream

My elbows or knees will occasionally

Touch or even hit yours

When monstrous clouds attack our plane

You’d better remain relaxed

Since it is not a matter of choice

Yet I am the type you are supposed to respect

I had an even happier childhood in nature

Although quite premature

I used to be the most civilized

Mighty and mysterious

I am in papers

I am not a phoenix

No more or less than a fellow traveler

With my own destination

So feel free to do whatever comforts you

We will travel together

The Peril of Watching Too Much TV News

            (After Adrian Mitchell’s “The Perils of Reading too much Fiction”)

If you watch too much tv about what is going on beyond your living room

You go quite mad

That’s what marco polo used to say every time he saw someone

Watching the big well-washed mouth yabaaing in front of a bigger camera

All their reporters and editors, none of them a true fly on the wall

With their freaky bias and nancy ways of looking at others

Selecting and shuffling words and pictures about evil soviets

Demon chinese, civilized lamas, angel-like looters

Humans biting dogs, johns’ caps on jills’ heads, and the deer called a horned horse

All of em juggled and tripping over one another in your little fragile brain box

Well, it’s a bit like unleashing a whole century’s illusions out of the corral

To stampede right over your ears and eyes

All those colored or uncolored lies

Whirling around inside your poor skull

Beating up storms of yellow dust

So overwhelming you cannot see or hear with your own senses

The real other world which is just the real other world

They claim to be the bars helping cage the most ferocious among us

Yet they are more ferocious than the crowned lion preying around in the jungle

Listen – what I say is

If you believe everything bbc or cnn reports about their edited worlds

You go quite mad

At the Gas Station

            (After Philip Webb?)

Does this gas

Taste of grain or blood to you?

They say pump

What you don’t drink with your mouth

Do all these nozzles

Serving the wrong thirst

Reach out from the same nightmare?

They say it’s all civilization

Anyway

So be a vampire

This Busy Life

(After W. H. Davies’s ‘Leisure’)

what would our life be if, full of desire

we can from our own hearts all retire

stop counting every shining rusty coin we could make

or selling our dignity, freedom or something even fake

stop trying to have sex with someone ideal

or to kiss, and talk dirty with someone real

stop gathering fame like picking every fallen pine cone

or seeking the autograph from someone better known

stop pursuing the power to influence others

or building the authority belonging to fathers

stop looking for bigger houses, richer foods, and more fashionable clothing

or getting newer hardware or fancier cars even when there’s nowhere going

stop pleading Jesus, Buddha, or Ala for a happier after life

or building heaven with earthly prayers said only to survive

Light vs Shadow

Was it the shadow?

Was it the shadow beyond?

Was it the shadow beyond the shadow?

Still fell the thick night,

When the heart blocked the light.

Yes, it is light!

It is light within!

It is light within light!

Loud sweeps the morning glow,

Where the mind has no shadow

No More Hanging On

so long have I longed

to give up all my earthy concerns

like an enlightened Buddhist monk

i am ready to climb up to

the peak of an unknown mountain

where I can build a plain hut

with fallen leaves and branches

where I can feel nothing

but the fresh songs of the forest

where I can hear

the budding of wild chrysanthemums

where I can taste the green wind

caressing the bubbling stream

where I can watch the sweetness of bamboos

shooting from the rocky vale

where I can smell the heavy breath

of tall pine trees and unknown bushes

will earth stop rotating round the sun

because of my humble interruptions?

Yellow Comedy

            (After Benjamin Zephaniah’s “White Comedy”)

Using my yellow tail

I yellow-swam

From the Yellow River

As a yeast of the yellow peril

Against the yellow alert

In yellow journalism

With a yellow hammer

And a yellow sheet

I yielded to the yellow metal

At a yellow spot

Close to Yellowstone

People call me Yellow Jack

Some hailed me as a yellow dog

When I yelped on my yellow legs

To flee from the yellow flu

Speaking Yerkish like a yellow warbler

I have composed many yellow pages

For a yeasty yellow book

To be published by the yellow press

Don’t panic, I yell low

The Girl Who Danced with Democracy*

            (After Adrian Mitchell’s “The Boy Who Danced with a Tank”)

It was the same old story

Story of one meets many

Yes the same old story

Story of one meets many

The one is disabled

While the many enjoyed all the powers and freedoms

Like a sampan

Riding on a stormy sea

Against foams of prejudiced justice

Foams of jealous pride

Foams of fearful composure

Foams of hateful fraternity

Foams of selfish altruism

And foams of foams of ignorant knowledge

She was edging forward

Inch by inch

On a little wheelchair

Under breaking waves of quasi-lamas or lama supporters

Waves of frenzy political correctors

Waves of ill-focused professional cameras

And waves of waves of impulsive pinchers and grabbers

You remember how we watched her

Struggling like a strong coral tree

And we knew for that moment

She was more noble-minded than ever we would be

A Chinese girl carried the Olympic flame in Paris

The cradle and capital of our most advanced civilization

Where she danced with democracy

*As the 3^rd torch bearer for the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics, Jin Jing was physically assaulted during the relay in France on 7 April although escorted heavily by the Police.

                                                                       

Another Dilemma

(After David Budbill’s ‘Dilemma’)

I long for tons of

            money

so I can be a

            honey

with all this

            money

What good is my

            generosity

when I get

            bogged

in such

            poverty?

Just A Quick Note

            (After William Carlos Williams’s “This Is Just To Say”)

Sorry

To have

Changed

The lock

Though

I had

Strongly

Wished

There

Would

Never

Be

Such

Need

Keeping Hands Full

           

You are always grasping, my friend

Says my therapist

You must learn to let go:

Whenever your hands are not full

You want to get hold of something

Or indeed anything

Now a bird in your left hand

And a bunch of flowers in your right

That’s why you are unhappy all this time

Because you do not have more hands

To grasp more things

Like green backs, purple ribbons

tall titles, soft sex and charming children

If you empty your left hand to catch the ribbons

You became unhappy about the departure of the bird

If you put down the flowers to take the greenbacks

You feel unlucky about the loss of beauty

But if you let go

Just let go

Whatever you are grasping

You can get happiness whenever you can

Since your hands are free

Poetry Penning

            (After Charles Bukowski’s ‘Poetry Readings’)

Poetry penning has to be the saddest damned business to do today:

You melt the letters with the best ingredients you have

Your boldest blood, your tenderest tears and your saltiest sweat

Every piece uniquely heart-made

Packaged with the purest silk of your soul

And priced far below the cost of the little fire in your body

But you can sell it for not a single cent

Indeed, only a few tribesmen and tribeswomen caring most about this archaic trade

Might come and take a casual look

When it is marked ‘free’

Like some utensils in a used box put on the road side

Oh yeah, with more wordsmiths than wordwares

More wordwares than hawkers

More hawkers than patrons

How can you expect the miracle of a market niche

For this sad damned business

As more and more patrons turn to raps, heavy metal music

Soaps, chat rooms, computer games, virtual sex

Hot dogs, chilled beers, pot or marijuana

That can entertain every nerve ending

The human body may or may not have besides the mind

So, if you must pen something

You’d best try a story, a screenplay, a slogan or even a spam

What I say is, pen pal

You may well pen anything

But for Christ’s sake

Not this crap

Uncertainty

           

Just as the shadow beyond the light

Is fictional, and fictional is

The word on the paper or screen

So is this hand also fictional

That writes from the heart of the night?

All the feelings swarmed together

What I meditated, flows

I wonder if this life of mine

Is posthumous before the birth

Of a refracted metaphor?

Thanksgiving

            (After Jane Kenyon)

You could have been killed

In that accident in 1997

But you did not. You could

Have lost every hard-earned loonie

When the big bubble burst

But you did not. You could

Have failed to realize your boyhood dream

To have your poetry published

But you did not. You could also

Have had to stay in the bed

Unable to eat or piss for three weeks

After the surgery last time

But you did not.

This morning you could have broken

Your newly old legs or arms

On the icy road as you jogged

But you did not. One day

You know, you might become

Much less fortunate somehow

But you will not, because you believe

you have always been lucky

Hamlet: the Play or the Movie

            (After David R. Slavitt)

Who does not love Hamlet,

If they show or perform it again tomorrow night,

Who would not go to watch him?

To be or not to be…we all have this question, mostly

In mind. But with audiences young or old,

The answer is all too clear, at the tongue, ah!

And the world will well remember,

Admire, study, discuss and argue

In every dialect for centuries and centuries.

Not so bad, after all, the poisoned

Wine, the poisoned sword is fatal.

The cries on all sides must be a warm comfort.

We all fall: only a few on a classic stage,

In front of so many

A New Specialty Invents after

Thirty Years of Marriage

            (After Leo Dangle)

‘yummy, it tastes so good!’ he exclaimed.

‘really?’ she asked.

‘where did you learn the recipe?

These steamed fish chips are really delicious

With all this shredded green onion and fresh ginger.’

‘well, this is the third time I cooked

it this way. Do you really mean

you like the dish?’

‘of cuz! Why would I want to lie

about the food YOU cook?’

‘well, this is the only thing

i am never sure about you.’

‘are you?!’

Scything

            (After John Steinbeck)

           

I often deplore my sons and nephews never felt

The pleasure of scything

There is no telling

Just how many hearts have been uplifted by this simple exercise

The warm wheat like golden flowers cut down, carpeting

The sunlight-framed fields

A plump land of ears listening to the songs of autumn

How neatly the ripeness lies around

The blade cut all the harvest right into the heart

Ignorant the wise e boys who

Have no idea of this stupid but sensational movement

Vancouverites

            (After Edward Field)

Everywhere else in the new world, when people meet

They would greet one anther saying

Isn’t it a nice day today! Sure it is!

Only in Vancouver will you say, another rainy day, or even

Foul or gloomy, and launch into your complaints and frustrations

Then yawn and become bored as they begin

To pour out their own similar resentments in more detail

Echoing like a parrot, you try to keep yourself less wet

Look, pal, it’s downpouring again, we got to run…uh…

So you start to flee in opposite directions

Each trying to hide yourself somewhere in a dry corner

As both of you leave the scene in haste

You know you can never remain dry on a rainy day

To Seek Bright Light I Close My Eyes Tight

            (After Dylan Thomas)

Looking around, I only see darkness in sight

All is thick shadow beyond thick shadow

To seek bright light I close my eyes tight

In each dream I have dreamed at midnight

I follow my heart, and closely my heart I follow

The darkest nightmare contains rays of light

Striving, I strive forward with all my might

Against the high flow, the flow that I well know

Looking around, I only see darkness in sight

Right at this site where the time is right

I let go my dream drifting away like a morning glow

Looking around, I only see darkness in sight

Inside, more inside is a door shining bright

I fumble my way slow as if a rough raft to row

To seek bright light I close my eyes tight

Men and women, come down from heated height

Don’t you hear the song from soul to soul echo

Looking around, I only see darkness in sight

To seek bright light I close my eyes tight  

Drawing the Dragon

There was a contest
Once
For the most faithful representation
Of yellow loong,

(Or the Chinese dragon)

In England

An inflated Satan
Or was it Sua proper
Came to squat among
words

Then stroke by stroke, again
It rose right
Upon
Each slate of white

Mind

Self-Record

            (After A. K. Ramanujan’s ‘Self-Portrait’)

you sound so similar to everyone

but yourself, and seldom speak to a non-human being

            to conform with the law

            of acoustics

the voice of a street guy

pitch so familiar

yet reluctant to echo

from soul to soul     

Like a Lamp

            (After Grace Nichols’s ‘Like a Beacon’)

in Vancouver west

from time to time

you just cannot help yelling, yearning

for your father’s humming

you fumble into musical halls

in pursuit of tunes

soft/hard utterances 

you need this feeling

you need this contact

with origin

guiding your heart

like a lamp

along a forlorn road

Universe Netting

How the nets of this universe

Mend themselves

It is impossible to say

Or if you say to see

That this is what you have

Said. Few crevices in the closet

Of an open mind

Where you rarely see what you say to look at

Though broken

There are nets

Above all

Murky

How anyone

Is seen

Is

So murky--

A pond of water

In a storm

Only sunlight might

Polish into a mirror

A light’s long line

Or one fellow light

From Longfellow                        

                                                     

Do Clouds Stop for You

Do clouds stop for you

You don’t em

You say ‘move’

Say

‘now’

‘then’

I           fallen

With your raindrops

You with my sweat

Your shadows pressing

Below you

Dryly

Euthanasia

Blood withers

My body is a pickle

I am bathing it

Yes I am cold-boiling

His stem, veins and leaves

Deeply soaked in my self-assertions

How he absorbed my spirits

From the quasi paradoxes

Of his senses

Till I stuffed

The whole vegetable

With my salty whims

Swollen like an apple

Bare as a twig

His fantasies hydrated

To revive him

Fresh from the brink

I demand to die

Corn

            (After Charles Simic’s ‘Watermelons’)

A whole body of teeth

Nothing but teeth

To chew the passing summer

We bite off from you

All the pearl-like memories

Tinged with sunlight

A hard but juicy kiss

Onion

            (After Lorna Crozier’s ‘Onions’)

With so many masks

Each getting fresher

Finer, fairer

And closer

To your heart

Your masks are your body

Your body is your face

Is your face your mask

Or your heart itself?

You have never been a forbidden fruit

Not even to Eve

The Fat Fabulous

            (After Gwendolyn Brook’s ‘We Real Cool’)

easy-going, they

gab; they

grin; they

giggle; they

guffaw; they

gossip; they

gyrate; they

goof off; they

galumph; gooey

Chanson by a Chinaman*

ching chong, chinee

chink, chinky, chonky

so was i called a dragon of barbarity

a born rogue holding the laws of truth in deformity

because i ate rats, dogs, slugs and snakes

i began with anything but genes of true humanity

ching chong, chinee

chink, chinky, chonky

so am i made a dead enemy of civility

growing grotesque against values in white reality

because i hate freedom as much as human rights

although i have the right to be a human entity

ching chong, chinee

chink, chinky, chonky

so will i be seen a species of non-conformity

an inflated satan beyond the borders of christianity

as long as i’m pig-eyed, crow-haired, the farthest other

i must be treated as a real demon only

*A parody on ‘Chanson for Canton’ (London: Punch, 1858), a telling example illustrative of the deeply-rooted and long-held western tradition to demonize China as culturally the most disparate Other.

Beyond the Blue

there is no borderline

between sea and sky

waves are pushing their colors

up towards the air, bloating

their calls and songs to bold

changing shapes

it is a world within nature

presenting itself, or what

cannot be represented elsewhere

separated from the mind

the frame always trying to capture

a few fish swimming in the waters                                      

Chasing Something Absent

beyond the shadow

you are the presence

of a shadow

that is

rarely the reality

whenever you are

you are not what is present

where you stand

you join the light

and never

the light disperses

to fill in the moments

when your spirit is absent

few others have the impulses

for standing

but you do

to chase something absent

The Black Bird

            (After William Carlos Williams’s ‘Wheelbarrow’)

so little triggers

off

a black bird

the nexus of antithesis 

foiled with snow

light

to fly into the vast history of

gray

Getting Newly Old

you can only talk

about what you used to do

and do

what you used to talk about

you shrink in both ways

and both ways are

the only way

to shrink

what’s supposed to be hard

softens like a boiled noodle

what’s supposed to be tender

hardens like a winter stone

one attempt

on top of another, they say

or, rather, one attemptable night

after another

Above the Water

            (After Lorna Crozier)

the goose has been floating

so long in the lake

its body above the water

becomes a picture, the rest

a rotten stick

the goose above the water

is more graceful than a swan

the goose under the water

is fossilized

in the heart of that lake

there is nothing

but a picture

of a goose-like figure

ever so bold and vivid

Outer Spaces

            (After Lorna Crozier)

the landscape is wildly wide

is thin-colored

conceptions loom above the skyline

impulses swirl near the hills

no wind of feeling is blowing
as the spirit sails on the sea

in the limbo

the whole outside is held

right at the tip of my mind’s tongue

Modern Mandarin-Speaker: Another Parallel Poem

The Chinaman you are

Is not what I heard

Though your speech is still single-syllabled

Four-toned

The Chinaman you are

Speaks a different mandarin now

Changed over time

Like pidgin

Making utterances

Bubbling and boisterous

That might hide

Your local accent

The Chinaman you are

Is not what I hear

Speaks with the same old pronunciation

But a new intonation

Day & Night: A Parallel Poem

The day has no ears

The heart but a myriad

The noises glare

Where life’s grievance begins

The night has no eyes

The mind but a myriad

The shadows collide

When your spirit bites at the light

Surrounding the Artwork: A Parallel Poem

It is understanding that counts in this world

The understanding from the depths of your heart and mine

That is far more helpful to a withering soul

Than honey or money, fame or game

For sexual pleasure can last no more than a few minutes

Wealth can never turn a leaf green in winter

Reputation in full bloom is meaningless once the twig breaks off

And power is only a cold joke to the truly wise

But understanding from a fellow soul can uplift the spirit

Saving it from thinning into nothingness

Suffice it to hope: it begins to communicate

Long before understanding comes along