POEM by Changming Yuan

 

 

Mirror vs Water

 
Both can collect
As much light and
Imagery from beyond
Their frames, while
The mirror stores
Everything in its shiny
But skin-deep surface
The water keeps all
Its reflections murky
Deep in its heart

 

Changming Yuan, 6-time Pushcart nominee and author of Chansons of a Chinaman (2009) and Landscaping (2013), grew up in rural China but currently tutors in Vancouver, where he co-publishes Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan and operates PP Press. With a PhD in English, Yuan has recently been interviewed by [PANK], and had poetry appearing in Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, Exquisite Corpse, London Magazine, Threepenny Review and 749 other literary journals/anthologies across 28 countries.

 

 

Poem by Kyle Hemmings:

 

 

Impressions of Miss Lucy Gable

I

She mistook him for the knife
that she'd use to perforate
the white clammy skin,
to extract from her organs
the genetic codes to her hybrid life:
half-starved servant with borrowed shoes,
a flighty girl in the attic who'd refused
to kill her mute swans. He  later became the child
she would've bore
without anesthetic.

II

When she became old enough to be
ambivalent about her knob-knees
the legs otherwise silky, prone
to night-bites, she woke to
mysterious signatures on the frosted window.
The fingers belonged to a melancholy
psychoanalyst who was in love with the sea,
the calm waves of the Aegean. One day,
in a frivoulous mood, she dared him to float
on his back. He said he'd reach North Africa,
sooner or later. She laughed and said "You'll sink."
He drifted away and she screamed herself
into a white mist. Unwilling to let him die,
she remain firmly shipwrecked in her room
over Fleet Street, until his spirit spilled
into the life of objects: the frilly dresses,
the mahogany desk, the chrystal glass table,
the oil lamp,and brass bed. The ceramic albatross.
Everything began to rise but it was really him,
she felt, looking out through her eyes, as if
they were port holes, and the world could be
both anchor and unplanned flight.

Kyle Hemmings lives and works in New Jersey. He has been published in Elimae, Smokelong Quarterly, This Zine Will Change Your Life, Blaze Vox, Matchbook, and elsewhere. He loves 50s Sci-Fi movies,  manga comics, and pre-punk garage bands of the 60s.
 

 

Poem by Thomas Zimmerman:
 

 

Seaside

How water slaps the dock! A gull careens.
Could be Laguna, or Rehoboth, Beach:
the hotel-room pastels, the harbor scenes
gilt-framed, the sea-smell balcony, a peach,
some brie beside the sweating bucket, wine
half gone. How many times have we been here?

The sea churns up so many things: a line
of verse, some beached and squiggly thing to fear,
the ancient roar and moan of birth and death,
remembered sex, of course, that straddles both.

Asleep or waking, I am here but loath
to wade in deep, though tides have pulled me, breath
and sight bereft, to realms of consciousness
my mind will alternately curse and bless.
 
Thomas Zimmerman teaches English, directs the Writing Center, and edits two literary magazines at Washtenaw Community College, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His chapbook In Stereo: Thirteen Sonnets and Some Fire Music appeared from The Camel Saloon Books on Blog in 2012. Tom's website: http://thomaszimmerman.wordpress.com/