Selected Tanka Prose: Not My President

In my dream, after the explosion of his twitter bomb, the fireball rises rapidly like a hot-air balloon into the sky, forms a mushroom cloud, and later the first black rain falls ...

on the sidewalk

outside Trump Tower

I p-i-s-s

and feel in my bones

old man winter

Skylark, 5:1, Summer 2017

Selected Tanka Prose: Routine Crises

I key in the headline Dozens dead after boat capsizes. Phones ring, and laptops chatter with stories from around the world. Adrenaline pumps through my body like a tidal wave.

fading tracks

on an Aegean shore

at twilight

which of them belong to those

who drowned in cold water

I glance at the oversized clock on the rear wall of the newsroom. Its hands march closer and closer toward the deadline. And the refugee story waits to be replaced ... with the latest news from the front lines of yet another war-torn country.

Haibun Today, 11:1, March 2017

Selected Tanka Prose: Re-Homing

for Li Bai

go back

to where you came from ...

slowly, I push

his middle finger

to a vagabond moon

drinking alone

under the autumn moon

for a moment

I speak to it

in my mother tongue

Where is my home? Is it Taipei, capital of the Republic of China, aka Taiwan, a modern metropolis with Japanese colonial lanes, busy shopping streets and towering glass office buildings, that place where I was born and raised, that place I often complained about and wanted to flee?

Where is my home? Is it the County of Mount Dragon in Hunan Province of the People's Republic of China, my father's hometown with its rushing waterfalls and misty mountain peaks, a place I've never set foot in?

Where is my home? Is it Ajax, Ontario, a bedroom suburb of row upon row of single-family detached houses in the richest province of Canada? Here I own a front lawn, a backyard, and struggle with a life in transition and translation ...

Haibun Today, 10:4, December 2016

Note: The Republic of China, aka Taiwan,  is the 14th freest economy in the world, yet still not recognized by the UN.

Selected Tanka Prose: Cassius Clay Turned Muhammad Ali

In Rome, 1960, Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light. What so proudly we hailed  at the twilight’s last gleaming? ... was sung through the summer breeze for the black  boxer. But, the Olympic gold medal couldn't buy him a cup of morning coffee and a  hamburger in a downtown restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky.

he watched the river

dragging the ribbon down,

red, white, and blue ...

his steady bombardment

of left jabs at the air

Haibun Today, 10:3, September 2016

Selected Tanka Prose: Hungry

When I first tasted her kiss, it was like spring water coming from the green slopes of a hill. For six years, her succulent words quenched my thirst. Now, the spring of our life starts to run dry.

she tells a lie

to conceal another

at the banquet

I stack oyster shells

one inside the other

Contemporary Haibun Online, 12:2, July 2016

Selected Tanka Prose: Aftermath

in Notre Dame Square

a blindfolded young man

with a sign:

I am a Muslim,

hug me if you trust me

An awkward laughter embracing the square. A lineup starts to form before this bearded man. In the shafts of sunlight,  particles are dancing and twinkling like tiny stars. To me, this world of wars today rearranges itself into a poem in the human form.

Haibun Today, 10:1, 2016

Selected Tanka Prose: A Part, Yet Apart

"'The letter 'I' is pronounced with a large flap of the tongue. In contrast, the best way to pronounce 'r' is to move your tongue as little as possible when making the sound," my eager ESL tutor tells me from across the table. After several attempts at "alive and arrive," "flee and free." and "blight and bright," I recognize a helpless look on her face. She is twenty years younger than I with dyed blonde hair. Then, in a low voice, she says, "Sometimes,  I'm jealous of you. You speak and act like you know who you are. Hovering between two worlds, I feel pressured to be loyal to the old one while living in the new, approved of on either side of my hyphenated identity: Chinese-Canadian."

she murmurs

I'm homesick at home ...

I respond

in halting English

the past is my home

A Hundred Gourds, 4:3, June 2015

Selected Tanka Prose: The Pain from an Old Wound

standing still
on the opposite shores
of the Pacific
in a dream ...
youthful Mother and aging me

When I was young, homesickness was a long cable line:
me on one end, Mother on the other.
When I grew up, homesickness was a three-sheet letter:
an hour’s labor, written and folded with care.
But later on, homesickness was reduced to $3 plus tax:
a seasonal greeting card.
Now, homesickness is a surging sea:
me in this Promised Land, Mother on a crowded island.

drifting in a dream
turned into a bird
flying over the Pacific --
I open my eyes
upon darkness again

Kokako, 22 April, 2015

Selected Tanka Prose: A Walking Shadow

stage lights on . . .

my copy of Macbeth

battered

and its cover spotted

as if by white molds

I start reciting in a hoarse voice, Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow . . . In the back of my mind, I wonder if there is another tomorrow for a gentile like me in this promised land.

Atlas Poetica, 21, 2015

Selected Tanka Prose: A Short Story about Love

at her window

two shadows entwine

in one embrace ...

like vampires sucking blood

from my memories

Sitting at my desk, swathed in darkness, I use the new telescope to zoom in on them – watch her rise and fall as the man guides her slow circular movements. His hands slide up from her hips to her breasts, continue to her shoulders, altering her rhythm, pulling her down onto him... 

I open the drawer, take out a pocket knife, rush down to the basement parking lot, and find his piercing red Jaguar. Crouching, I plunge the tip of the knife into one of his tires with climactic fierceness; then I stab and I stab...the second, third, and fourth.

I rip out

each page of our life

this sultry night

the dream soaks my bed

with her moaning

hedgerow, 12, December 12 2014

Selected Tanka Prose: I write, therefore I am

I try out

the word English writer

in my Chinese mouth

several times ...

this bittersweet taste

I write poetry in the music of a language not natural to me. I am frustrated by my slow progress, but sometimes feel good about this hard fact: writing is the only thing I can do with my immigrant life here and manipulate it in the way I desire. When I stay drunk on writing, reality cannot destroy me.

at the gun-mouth

of time’s barrel

I write --

I live for myself

by myself

Whispers,  October 11, 2014

Selected Tanka Prose: A Portrait of the Poet as an Immigrant

Drunk on moonlight from Taipei I stand alone under the Toronto sky.

My mind is schizophrenic, but my hand is steady as I pursue a would-be poem on this wintry night.

my anguish

crumpled into a ball ...

I keep writing

as the wastebasket waits

for another throw

Sunlight drifts through the window and settles on the worn cover of A New Practical Chinese-English Dictionary. My heart, that lonely hunter, seeks the page where the odor of words is strongest.

every day

tastes a little

different

my hunger for words

to picture a poet

Haibun Today, 8:3, September 2014

Selected Tanka Prose: A Life in Transition

ten-lide ticket

to Toronto ...

in the booth

what did you say

echoing and echoing

I try to speak like you in order to be able to speak with you. But, to your Canadian eyes, I look just like one of the Chinese coolies who laid the last spike of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and who were cropped out of the ceremony photo.

Haibun Today, 8:2, June 2014

Selected Tanka Prose: The Road Less Traveled

In 1693, parting from his favorite disciple Kyoroku, Basho said, “Didn't the retired Emperor Go-Toba say of Saigyo's poetry that it contained truth tinged with sorrow? Take strength from his words and follow unswervingly the narrow thread of the Way of poetry.”

a sliver of moon...

I cling to the thin line

of labor

to capture loneliness

in love poetry

NeverEnding Story, April 5, 2013

Selected Tanka Prose: The Sunflower Girl

She burst into my room, “I want to taste this summer petal by petal as if it were my last.” I cannot remember the color of her dress as she stood with sunlight pouring through the window and looked as if she were on fire.

snowflakes drift
this Easter Sunday...
the space
between her dates
cut into black stone

Atlas Poetica, 13,Autumn 2012

Selected Tanka Prose: Exiled

I left Formosa
for the land of maple leaves --
fingerprints
on my forehead
the same moon

At long last, her letter arrives. It's filled with unbroken longing, passion, and finally concludes with those three beautiful words that are what they were, postmarked 7/7/2012, ten years after I left for Canada.

Between us is a continent, an ocean, and our shared memories that are fading with time. I cannot remember how many nights we gazed at each other under a bright moon. During the first year in Canada, I often woke up in a cold sweat from the dream of her veiled in white and waiting in a dark forest.

single bed
in a moonlit attic
crowded with books …
everything I need
yet nothing I want

Haibun Today, 6:3, September 2012

Note:  Formosa, which means "beautiful island" in Portuguese, is the former name of Taiwan.

Selected Tanka Prose: The Sign

I watched her

getting smaller and smaller

all winter...

spring comes early, she walks

into the Garden alone

A thread of moonlight through the window. My dog-eared Bible on the coffee-stained desk.

Another sleepless night. Did Jesus die with a cry in despair, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Or did he expire with a look on his face that shows his serene confidence, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit?”

I remember the first time she walked into my attic room, seeing the walls lined with bookcases for biblical reference books. She turned to me and said, “My little Thomas, faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen." At every word,  her cheek dimpled into a smile.

her bony hand

grasped helplessly at the air…

the wooden cross

she gave me for my birthday

casts a long shadow

Haibun Today, 6:2, June 2012

Selected Tanka Prose: Being-in-the-World

“What is human life?” I once asked my philosophy professor. I didn’t get a satisfactory answer then, and don’t have one even now.

day by day
I get up, eat, read, write
and sleep --
my mind grows grayer
with each night's dream

It is commonly believed that human life is like a blade of grass that sprouts in early spring, grows green and strong in summer, and then, as time slips by, withers in late autumn, and finally dies out in winter.

I stare
at the sun steadily
seeing Death
wave to me
I wave back and start writing

Atlas Poetica, 9, Summer 2011

Selected Tanka Prose: Old Photos of the Future

At dusk I sit in front of my computer reflecting upon the bright, promising smiles of my childhood, youth, and early thirties. I scan them one by one.

in the photos

we have ceased to be

the same…

I am his outcome

he, my memory

The setting sun sinks slowly on my glasses, and in the deep of the computer screen a gloomy and bemused face is mirrored.

Pirene's Fountain, 4:9, April 2011

Selected Tanka Prose: My Bird of Youth Has Left

French dramatist Victor Hugo once said that forty is the old age of youth. I wholeheartedly agree with his words. After passing the age of forty, I have become more anxious about growing old. I used to be the black cloud; now, I'm turning gray. Time slips away, hair whitens, hands age, veins emerge, and wrinkles stamp the brows. The back begins to ache, teeth become loose, and the voice gets hoarse, a charming quality to some and the roughness of age to others. Furthermore, the body grows dry and liable to fracture, and one day it will no longer respond.

looking out
bare maple branches
in the breeze --
mortally wounded
waving goodbye

Haibun Today, 3, 2009

Note: In celebration of the upcoming 7th anniversary of being a published writer of Japanese short form poetry, I am pleased to announce a new publishing project, Selected Tanka Prose by Chen-ou Liu.