November 18th Poems – Center for New Americans

NIGHT MARKET:TAIPEI

Coiled in the shadows
of the noodle stand
chopsticks click.
We are squatting
slurping soup
lips sucking
luxurious
long
egg-yellow noodles.

Watching snake blood
drain
wiggingly
into hesitant
gaping
gold tooth mouths
of blue- eyed tourists
foreigners
waving
thousand NT notes
offering
wheedling ,coaxing
cajoling, threatening
bargaining
to double the price
of monogrammed silk shirts

George Cernada

*****************************************************************************

Relic of the Present

Firestorms cook dry ground

crispy, leaving a golden glow

after consuming most everything

in its path.

What remains, buried in ash,

defied the flames that once

licked tenaciously like a child

with a pop.

From the slag of climate change,

skeletons of wheels, still round,

carcasses of dwellings, rise tall

in Phoenix-like awe.

Progress, at times like these,

takes the back seat,

hiding in apparent shame

until next time,

when the advancement

of Future’s brainchild whisks in

full of ideas and promises

clothed in defiance…

of the Truth.

****************************************************************************

November Morning Stars

Venus and mercury rise in the morning sky

Cosmic they are, whispering the temptations

Of desires and dreams packed like the innards

Of pomegranate where so many years collapsed

Into divided chambers.

We are all stars and planets tucked into pockets

Of caverns, deep and far as the time whittles

Us down smaller and smaller renewing

The temporary tattoos on the track.

Every erased is a death in the hoops of time

Round and round—build and rebuild.

The morning stars, prominent and brief,

Mark the time again whispering temptations

Of desires and dreams keeping the lonely

Monsters at bay.

Yenna Yi

******************************************************************

Puzzling Prayer to St. Anthony

Tony, Tony, look around —

Something’s lost that can’t be found.

The jigsaw puzzle that I wrought

Was shattered in the parking lot.

To the frame store I was bound,

But lost two pieces on the ground —

The only thing I can control,

Now blemished by an odd-shaped hole.

The photomosaic, when assembled,

The Mona Lisa’s face resembled.

Like an art restoration botched,

Her noble brow with holes is blotched.

Tony, what now, this void to fill?
Should I roll it down the hill

Till the lacuna can’t be seen,

As in that book by Shel Silverstein?

Slap on a Band-Aid, call it Dada?

Intercede with the Holy Father,

Tony, I pray, and let me find

Ease for my fragile peace of mind,

Even if I must cut and paste

A tiny photo of my own face

‘Twixt Vermeer and Michelangelo

Like a Hitchcock movie cameo,

The creator’s Leonardo fecit —

In other words, fake it till you make it.

Jendi Reiter

(they/them)

*******************************************************************************

when the sky turned orange

it stayed blood orange for days
and they turned into weeks
orange and dark yellow
and bruises of days
we couldn’t go outside
the air’s particulates visible
ash everwhere – you could taste it
we covered the fan with saran wrap
put damp rags and towels
around the windows
there was no such thing as sky
everything hung with mal
as if poisoned, no breath
no breathing, no movement
no travel not even to get food
everything parsed out in
measured puffs
and yet we were the lucky ones
the ones who had somewhere to go
whose houses were far enough away
to not burn down to nothing
leaving lawn ornaments of burnt
and burning
I saw a bicycle and it looked like I felt inside
rusted

—C. D. Finley