literature

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The if and when

Another day left on keeps blinking on the brain while the Goodman riff chimes. The water is cool, the fragrance of the South East breeze down the pipes, the bottle gurgles, lips wet. If and when he’s gone, will anyone wonder, take time to look, interested in words here or anywhere, or then just pack it up and stow it? No cloud, no blog post, no auditorium of souls remembering, just an obit, the eventual shoe print in gravel rain will soak away, unrecognizable. Would the cul-de-sac recall his morning shadow as he strolls one last time, cup in hand, for the wood shed half empty, half full.

The Solomon Seal buzzed in the grey light, a bee bumbling for pollen. Maybe that is all we are, or less, like bees bumbling for purposes we imagine, even less a forager than once when digits were eager to meet berries and the Cecropia caterpillar was found.

Remember what you’d miss, were it whisked away one afternoon in the lucky time sunshine, and the anamnesis of childhood plays your sepia tone twilight. Those smoke bush leaves glow in the parting sun as a kaleidoscope through limbs and leaves descending, turning those red leaves to bright amber then back to shadow, evidence of the turning world. Breath the end of May’s evening air traded with the grateful green.

His thoughts had been cynical. He told himself he was becoming misanthropic in his sense of pointlessness but his heart lifted when he saw the bunting and the cardinal. People could be such asses and he had to be crazy, too, but then, unable to tell anyone the difficulty, at least he had not expressed his frustration with Laurie. He felt that might be nobler, delay confrontation, if the disappointment didn’t take hold, especially if he didn’t know if it was he or she. There is always equal blame to go around.

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China

My father fell from the bed. With a loud, but cushioned thud against the carpet, that seemed to make all the walls of the room pulsate, he fell onto the floor, now hacking, and gasping.

My mother slid across and jumped off the bed, and with her feet on the floor now, too, grabbed and tried to lift my father’s arms up with her own, attempting to help bolster his entire body up.

‘Duo-duo, come help!’ she yelled.

I had propped myself up on the bed on my left elbow, staring at them. I froze for a second. Just then, my head seemed completely empty of all thought and emotion. I was certain, I am certain, that for a second, or even for just a split-second of a second, it was as if someone, outside the window of our hotel room, had pointed a remote control directly at our room, at my father, my mother, and me, at the beds, still quavering from our movements, at the sheets dangling off the corner of the beds, at the palpitating walls, at the dust whirling through the ray of light of the lamp, and hit pause . . .

 

by HC Hsu from Middle of the Night

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Parallel

You get on.

You don’t see me.

You take the seat two rows in front of me.

I see your backside, the back of your head, your dark brown, somewhat frizzed and wavy hair. For some reason, I don’t tap you on the back, or your shoulder (I see you turn around—surprised, smiling, your eyes sparkling, an underwater cavernous limestone blue—‘Hey, when did you get on?’ you ask, and try to stand up as you jolt forward, your body leaving your seat, as you find a way to balance yourself and move toward me)—but I stay still, and we remain where we are.

I watch you. I don’t see your face. It’s a strange feeling, as if I were no longer me, or were somewhere else completely, or I had simply disappeared, evaporated, from here and now. It occurs to me I had never up until then, seen you. In your completeness.

In your solitude.

I wonder what you are like without me.

Yourself plus the world minus me.

 

by HC Hsu

from Middle of the Night, a book in the works to appear from Deerbrook Editions sometime in 2015
also author of Love is Sweeter, http://lethepressbooks.com/

He also has a translation of Chinese dissident and 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo’s official biography coming out in 2015 by Rowman & Littlefield.

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On Borrowed time

Ducky

Borrowed time. Lucky, in other
words, beaten the odds, gotten
an extension on any manner of
conditions. Artificial time.
We pay the ultimate percentage
for borrowed time but there is
no better imitation.
As with many clichés, the meaning
has been eroded, we don’t think
of meaning with such sound bites
as they exist to avoid actual
complexity, emotion; like a password
for agreement on cynicism, on
unmentionable death or some
life changing financial outcome,
about to take us off grid.

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Improves with age

The life of the persimmon could be literary. Persimmons are the edible fruit of a number of species of trees in the genus Diospyros. The word Diospyros comes from the ancient Greek words “Dios” (διός) and “pyros” (πυρος). In context, this means more or less “divine fruit”, though its literal meaning is closer to “Wheat of Zeus”.[2][3] It is, however, sufficiently confusing to have given rise to some curious interpretations, such as “God’s pear” and “Jove’s fire”. The Modern Greek name for the fruit is λωτός (lotos) which leads modern Greeks to the assumption that this is the lotus referred to in Homer‘sOdyssey.

Persimmons ripen over time.

This blog was set up to carry literature, selected poetry and prose, from submissions to Deerbrook Editions, (http://www.deerbrookeditions.com and https://deerbrookeditions.wordpress.com) an independent literary press publishing deserving authors in well designed trade books. Author’s work will be selected and permitted by the author or in the case of a selection having been published, posting would give whatever promotion  and credit to the published work as such a blog might offer. WordPress.com blogs seem to offer somewhat greater exposure through the use of tags.