Poetry in the Moment

"Merely to say, to see and say, things 
as they are,” grows loud ... and louder in a corner of my mind as moonlight slants through the ...

using alphabets not ideograms, I write life into existence ... how long will these footprints remain in the snow of time Laurels, 4, 2025

oh, you speak well where are you really from? behind the fence my neighbor, a native speaker of the weasel language  this dream loop, a mome...

Mother once sighed, you've spoken English for too long you might forget me ... exiled for years, I can't recall which language I dre...

this immigrant life    a stacking doll of evasions...   to mom’s phone call   I respond, “eat well, work hard   save more and sleep fine” in...

one night I’m in Ajax             the next I’m in Taipei ... these leaps  of time, space and language across this life-dream expanse  Ribbon...

the departure door closed between mother and me ... fifteen years later surging waves, one continent and English separate us Cold Moon Journ...

Chinatown stroll my thoughts flow in Chinglish Failed Haiku, 8:87, March 2023

care-home window momo, momo… Father slips back to his native tongue Haikuniverse, February 21 2023

When my father's coworker drove him to the ER with back pain, the doctor sent him home with an adhesive heat patch. Weeks later, he felt...

an ocean away Mother asks, have you eaten yet? in Chinese ... the ache of my native tongue overshadowed by English Gusts, 35, Spring/Summer ...

a sugar cube dropped into a cup of tea on a blind date my personality dissolves in a borrowed tongue Prune Juice, 37, 2022

crows caw-caw-caw in the front yard maple ... ten years of my tongue acclimating to the way my white neighbor speaks English NeverEnding Sto...

my young friend now speaks English without an accent ... the wu-long tea I drink tasting so bitter Ribbons, 12:3, Fall 2016

ESL class my Chinese tongue tangled and untangled (note: ESL stands for English as a Second Language) Failed Haiku, 4:41, May 2019

I stare at the ellipses at the end of a life story etched in a borrowed tongue they speak of falling into spaces untold and foreign s...

Sitting in my ESL teacher's living room with its wall-to-wall Persian rugs, I am enveloped by family stories and jokes. Although half t...

Like a Chinese coolie laboring in a foreign mine, I try hard to dig out those English words that resonate with my  thoughts of home and pen...

"'The letter 'I' is pronounced with a large flap of the tongue. In contrast, the best way to pronounce 'r' is to m...

I  stretch  the  language  as     far     as  the  eye  can  see  wintermist Revision, NeverEnding Story, March 15, 2015