Terracotta Typewriter #5 by Terracotta Typewriter

Terracotta Typewriter

Issue #5 Spring 2010

Unsolicited manuscripts are welcomed throughout the year. Terracotta Typewriter seeks submissions of literary works with a connection to China. The definition of “connection to China” can be stretched as much as an author sees fit. For example, expatriate writers living in China or who have lived in China, Chinese writers writing in English, translators of Chinese writing, works that are set in China, manuscripts covered in Chinese food (General Tso’s chicken doesn’t count), or anything else a creative mind can imagine as a connection to China. © 2010 by Terracotta Typewriter. All rights reserved. Cover art by Magnus © 2010 Visit our Web site at http://www.tctype.com. This literary journal is free for distribution. NOT FOR RESALE.

Terracotta Typewriter A Cultural Revolution of Literature

In This Issue From the Editor

Butterfly Effect

Kate Bergen

Liu’s Pigeons

Jack Frey

Chinese Girls Don’t Have Frizzy Hair

Jennifer Hecker

Nameless Faces Jubilee Street

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Joanne Olivieri

Interview with Peter Hessler

Fog

Jim Davis, Jr.

Li Po

Kevin Wu

Exquisite Corpse

Multiple Poets

Contributor Notes

From the Editor Dear Readers and Writers, We are moving into our second year of publication with our fifth issue. Your support is greatly appreciated, and we look forward to bringing you more literary enjoyment in the future. For this issue we attempted to create an exquisite corpse with some of our previous contributors and friends. Usually such a poem works better when everyone is in the same room, but it’s difficult when everyone lives around the world. In the spirit of modern progress, we assembled our exquisite corpse through e-mail. This is the first time that our poets will see each others’ names attached to the experiment. We are also grateful to author Peter Hessler for taking the time to participate in an interview for this issue. It was a pleasure to talk with him about his life and work. We recommend his newest book, Country Driving. Keep writing!

Matthew Lubin Editor & Publisher tctype@gmail.com

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Kate Bergen

Butterfly Effect Beijing— Leopard lacewing Takes flight over garden Teeming with Perpetual Spring Stirs haze of cool March air With beat of wing Is gone— August— Monarch death march Nectar-heavy wildflowers On hurricaned Texas prairie Death throws beat back wet air; Traced back to March, Beijing— Summer— Effect and cause Of spring wings that chanced to Cause a current that bred a storm Air stirs and a world ends The Butterfly Effect—

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Jack Frey

Liu’s Pigeons

here had been too many tragedies over the years, some of them only now unfolding, and I was reluctant to ask about them. So instead I waited until the old man had finished his cigarette, gave him an opportunity to spit a frothy glob of phlegm into the brown water that lapped at his door, and asked him about his gezi. Tell me about your pigeons, I said. Liu’s eyes lit up, grey filmy eyes that danced behind soft lids. He looked over at the wire cage fixed to the wall of his farmhouse, where the birds crouched, their smooth bluish heads turning with sharp jerky movements. The bars of the cage were coated in a thick layer of pasty white excreta that dangled from the bottom like stalactites. He’d kept pigeons for as long as he could remember, he said. He received his first pair as a gift from a neighbour. Liu pointed at a house a few steps down the hill. The house was already abandoned, water up to the tops of the windows, flowing into the black cavities and out the front door. As Liu grew older, he said he’d learned to love the birds for their quiet ways and their shy manners. The males, with their broad tail feathers, the way they put on a show whenever they sought to woo their mate. The babies, with their thin pink skin and bulging sightless eyes. At one point, he’d had as many as sixty birds in half a dozen cages. But hard times came now and then, and the pigeons were the first to go. Three times his family had eaten the flock down to the last bird. It was hard, Liu said, like losing special seeds that have been in the family for many years. But he always acquired new birds, and the ones he had now were the offspring of a mating pair he’d bought twelve years ago. I looked at the birds, huddled in their cage. How is it, I asked, that they don’t fly away for good when you open the cage? Liu laughed, showed me his dark teeth, and said that they just knew the way home, 4

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knew where they were safe. As if to demonstrate, he hobbled towards the cage and twisted the wire hook that held the door shut. He reached in, grabbed the nearest bird in his leathery palm, and tossed it into the air. The pigeon spread its wings, flapped furiously, and then sailed into the dull grey sky. Those in the cage took this as their cue to hop out, one by one, and take off after the leader. We watched them for a few moments as they gathered into formation beneath the heavy clouds, circling the old house. Two or three had special flutes attached above their tails, resting on their feathers like old bustle skirts. The flutes were shaped like a gourd, with a number of short tubes protruding all around, and as the birds flew, the wind passed through and produced an eerie wooden sound. If I closed my eyes, it was possible to imagine that I stood beneath a passing flock of ghosts. The pigeons descended and came to rest on the sloped roof, where crispy weeds had sprouted from the dirt caked between the tiles. They cooed and ducked and turned their heads in circles. Liu had lit up another cigarette by now, and stood with his back against the cart near the door. He dragged his toe through the brown water. I took a chance, brought up the tragedy, and asked him where his family would be resettling. Liu blew a fine plume of smoke between his thin lips and sighed. Up north, he told me, where some farmland had been set aside and some houses already built. He hadn’t seen the place personally, but the local official told him it was even better than here. I could tell from the tone in his voice that he didn’t believe it. But what other choice did he have? In a few days, the water would be spilling over his doorstep, and within a few months this whole valley would be underwater. Liu moved towards the cage once more, and grabbed it firmly at both ends. The cage rested on two hooks set in the wall, and once he’d wriggled it free, he set it on the back of the cart. The first drops of rain began to fall, darkening the packed earth before the house, plopping into the water in a splatter of concentric rings. I asked if he would be taking the birds north with him. 5

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Of course, he said. The pigeons were a part of him, an extension of his body almost, and I think that he flew with them, rested on the rooftops with them. He puttered with the cart for a while before disappearing inside the farmhouse, and as I watched him go, I thought about those birds and the way that they always returned home. But where do they fly to, I wondered, when the cage is gone?

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Jennifer Hecker

Chinese Girls Don’t Have Frizzy Hair

never told my grandmother that when I was little I thought China was a fictional place; somewhere that she and my mother had made up to scare me. They would tell me to eat all my rice because the children in China had to grow it, but barely had enough for themselves. Grandmother would babble for hours in her heavy accent while brushing her short, straight, dark hair that before she left China mobs had broken into her house and destroyed everything. The only thing she had brought to the United States was a dragonfly hairpin that she wore daily. To me, China was a reprimand and a warning to behave myself. I am the second generation of my family to be born in the United States and I never felt Chinese. My father is IrishAmerican. My mother was born here. I don’t even have a Chinese name. When my grandmother and mother speak to each other in Chinese, I don’t understand them. Even my grandmother constantly reminded me as she combed my hair, that I did not look Chinese. “This curly, frizzy hair!” she would complain. “How is anybody supposed to brush it? Good Chinese girls don’t have frizzy hair.” One day, when I was seventeen and filled with teen angst, I finally answered, “Then I guess I’m not Chinese.” “You have no respect for your ancestors!” my grandmother yelled at me as she snapped the brush through my hair. 7

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“Ouch!” “Our ancestors lived in China for thousands of years. We must honor our land.” “I’m American, grandma. I don’t care about stupid China.” That was the day that it was decided. I heard my mother and grandmother talking for hours in the kitchen. The scent of green tea alerted me to the fact that an issue was being discussed and when I peaked my head around and saw that grandma had used the tea in her special red tin, I knew the issue was a serious one. I called home during lunch the next day and Grandma answered. “Grandma, I’m gonna go to Tina’s house after school day. Is that okay?” “Not today, no,” she answered without explanation. “Why not? We have to do a project together,” I lied. “Not today. I already told you.” I huffed out a long puff of air and groaned, “But we have to. The project is due tomorrow.” “You will come straight home today.” I imagined grandma quickly pulling the brush through my curly hair, the way she only did when she was upset and I conceded to let her win the argument. “Fine. But it’s not fair!” When I came home, my grandmother sat me down in the kitchen and broke the news to me. “You are going to spend the summer in China.” “What?” I screamed as I jumped out of the chair and across the kitchen. “No! I’m not going. You can’t make me go. This is a free country. You can’t just ship me off to 8

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China!” My grandmother did not react to my protests, but went on speaking calmly. “You are going to have Chinese lessons everyday.” “This is so unfair! None of the other kids have to learn Chinese. All my friends get to go to horseback riding camp. Mom promised me I was going with them. It was a promise. You can’t take it back!” I slammed my body against the fridge and cried. My grandmother continued calmly. “It has been decided.” That was the only year in my life that I dreaded summer vacation. I hated the long, boring, cramped flight. I despised the crowds on the streets, the smells that saturated every molecule of air, the stomach churning food. I abhorred the sound of Chinese surrounding me. I loathed my mother and grandmother most of all for having put me in this place. My mother stayed with me the first month and then left me with distant cousins of mine. My distant cousins took to staring at my hair and occasionally plucking strands from my head. The youngest girl in the house, who was about twelve, was always hiding in corners and popping out to be able to grab onto my hair and pull on it. I was lucky I could not understand the words they said to me about my appearance, even though I knew they were insults. For three months I locked myself in the bedroom, coming out only to eat breakfast and snacks. I called my dad as much as I could and begged him to move my flight up, but my mother wouldn’t let him. When I finally came home, I marched right up to my grandmother, who sat drinking green tea at the kitchen table 9

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and let out three months worth of frustration. “I hate you! I hated your stupid country. It was horrible. You’re so mean!” My insults must have continued for ages, but my grandmother sipped on her tea and looked me in the eyes without words. After I was silent a moment she asked, “Are you done?” “No! Why can’t you just accept that I’m not Chinese and never will be? Look at me. You even said it: Chinese girls don’t have curly hair.” September came. I turned eighteen and moved away for college. Three months later, as I was planning my schedule to study abroad in Ireland, my mother called to tell me that my grandmother had died suddenly in her sleep. Regret hit me before the tears. I ran my hands through my hair and my fingers became tangled in the curls. I pulled the strands in front of my face and stared at the dark brown frizz before me. I thought of my grandma’s smooth, black hair and her dragonfly pin. The day of my Grandmother’s funeral I dyed my hair jet black. For hours I labored to make sure every strand was straight. I stood in my grandmother’s room in front of her old, immaculately clean mirror and placed the dragonfly pin on right side of my head, just as she did every day. I gazed into the mirror and then at the faded picture of my grandparents in China on their wedding day. It was the first time I ever felt Chinese. In the mirror, staring back at me, was the image of my grandmother as a young woman. When I went back to school, I put together my schedule for my semester abroad; five months in China. I couldn’t wait for my flight to end, not because the seats were uncom10

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fortable, but I wanted to experience the smells, the sights, and the crowded streets. Everything reminded me of my grandmother.

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Joanne Olivieri

Nameless Faces Walking foreign steps to the rhythm of taiko the pulse of erhu dancing Buddha. Cantonese croonings lotus flower soft silk smooth operatic chants. Lanterns parade a welcome smile nameless faces yet known. Humid mist Eastern breeze incense fog scents of life. and the journey begins

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Jubilee Street Smoky Incense orange, mango and pear offered to Buddha in a wooden alcove. The street lined as a red carpet event with paper lanterns green, pink, red, gold. Hand woven baskets home to fruits, flowers bok choy and cabbage strewn among street stalls. Neighbors along the street, raw silk, pots and pans, souvenirs and toys compete for attention and the Hong Kong dollar.

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An Interview with Peter Hessler Peter Hessler moved to China in 1996, beginning his career with the Peace Corps in Fuling, Sichuan Province. He later became the Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker from 2000 to 2007. Hessler has written three books on China—his most recent is Country Driving, in which he documents the growing automotive culture of China and its effects on rural mobility and migrant life. Hessler’s first book, River Town, which followed his experience teaching English with the Peace Corps in Fuling won the Kiriyama Book Prize. Oracle Bones, published in 2006, was a finalist for the National Book Award. In 2008, he won the National Magazine Award for excellence in reporting. I caught up with Hessler at a Meet the Author event at Asia Society in New York City. He agreed to be interviewed via e-mail, and I appreciate the long-distance conversation. Excerpt from Country Driving: In Beijing, I rented a car and headed to Shanhaiguan, a city on the coast where the Great Wall meets the Bohai Sea. From there I drove west through the harvest of Hebei Province. It was mid-autumn and most crops had already been cut down; only the corn stills tood tall in the fields. Everything else lay out in the road—mottled lines of peanuts, scattered piles of sunflower seeds, bright swaths of red pepper. The farmers carefully arranged the vegetables on the side of the asphalt, because that was the best surface for drying and sorting. They tossed the chaff crops into the middle of the road itself, 14

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where vehicles would be sure to hit them. This was illegal— there’s no other act that so publicly violates both traffic safety and food hygiene. In rural China, though, it’s still widely tolerated, because threshing is easiest when somebody else’s tires do the work. Initially I found it hard to drive over food. On the first day of my journey, I screeched to a halt before every pile, rolling down the window: “Is it OK for me to go through?” The farmers shouted back impatiently: “Go, go, go!” And so I went—millet, sorghum, and wheat cracking beneath me. By the second day I no longer asked; by the third day I learned to accelerate at the sight of grain. Approaching a pile, I’d hit the gas—crash! Crunch!—and then in the rearview mirror I’d see people dart into the road, carrying rakes and brooms. That was my share of the autumn work—a drive-through harvest.

Terracotta Typewriter: What would you do if you didn't write? Peter Hessler: I’d probably teach. After grad school, those are the only two things I seriously thought about doing: writing and teaching. I think I might also enjoy driving a truck. TCType: Was there anywhere you didn't travel in China that you wish you had visited? Hessler: I would have liked to have spent more time in Xinji15

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ang and Tibet. I actually never visited Suzhou or Hangzhou, despite all the time I spent in Zhejiang province. But I don’t regret it too much as the tourist places are usually not that interesting. TCType: Did you ever have the desire to learn to make Lanzhou la mian? Hessler: My friend Jen Lin-Liu learned how to do it. I did learn how to bao jiaozi recently, here in Colorado, which tells you that I’m very slow-moving when it comes to food. It would take a very long time before I’d get around to Lanzhou la mian. TCType: What is the best Chinese food for creative inspiration? Hessler: My favorite is Sichuanese food. We had that every day in Fuling; back then there were no other options, no other cuisines near the college. So I became very accustomed to it and now it just feels like “normal” Chinese food to me. Of course, there’s a lot of Sichuanese food in Beijing, so I ate it often when I lived in that city. You can find it in some places in the U.S. I’ve been to first-rate Sichuanese restaurants in Flushing, San Diego, and Denver. TCType: What advice would you give writers who are considering a move to China? Hessler: I think it’s a great place for a writer. I guess the main advice would be to study the language first; sometimes 16

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when you first arrive it’s best to have a period where you’re not writing so much. It gives you a space to learn about the place and start to figure it out, and it gives you time to focus on the language. Eventually I’d recommend finding subjects outside of Beijing and Shanghai—there’s so much interesting stuff happening in the interior, and we don’t hear that much about it. I was glad that I started out by living in a small city, but that’s harder to do for a writer who needs to make freelance contacts. Still, they can travel to these places and find stories. I’d also recommend trying to find long-term projects. This can be another way to balance a Beijing or Shanghai perspective. When I was working on my Lishui project, I would go down there every month or so and spend a few days or a week doing research. I had a regular deal with a local hotel, or I could have rented an apartment. It’s probably not that hard for a Beijing- or Shanghai-based writer to do this in another city, and it would give them a chance to know the place well and do deeper research projects. TCType: What should be required reading for Westerners moving to China? Hessler: Anybody going to Beijing should read Michael Meyer’s The Last Days of Old Beijing; we are good friends but regardless I would recommend that book. There’s also a good range of books for people who are doing business—Mr. China gives an excellent portrait of business during a slightly earlier generation, and James Kynge’s China Shakes the World is a very good general overview. I think my wife’s book, Factory Girls, is great for people coming to China from many dif17

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ferent directions—it’s important for those involved in business to understand something about the workers, and the book also covers women’s issues in a personal and interesting way. There are a number of good teacher books out there; when I was in the Peace Corps I much enjoyed Mark Salzman’s Iron and Silk and Bill Holm’s Coming Home Crazy. It’s really worth reading Wild Swans, Life and Death in Shanghai, and Red Azalea—these are historically important but also deeply felt. I’ve always felt like The Private Life of Chairman Mao is underappreciated; in addition to the history, it says a lot about Chinese psychology. In recent years we’ve seen a much broader range in books by foreign journalists than ever before; it used to be that all journalist books had a vaguely similar feel. But now a reader can usually find something good that touches on a particular topic that interests him: Postcards from Tomorrow Square, China Road, Chinese Lessons, Wild Grass, Out of Mao’s Shadow, Serve the People. TCType: Did you ever play the part of the dumb/ignorant laowai to avoid trouble or a difficult situation? Hessler: I guess we all do that to some degree. In general people give you more breaks if you’re a laowai, especially if you speak the language. I’ve usually found that it’s better to establish that you speak the language than to pretend that you don’t. TCType: Do you have a set routine when you set out to write a book? Hessler: The research always follows its own path; each book 18

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has been different. But the writing is similar. I write best in the mornings and early afternoons, and then I usually go for a long run in late afternoon. It’s a pretty quiet and enjoyable routine. I don’t find that writing causes me a lot of stress. TCType: Do you edit your work while you write or do you wait until you've finished a draft? How do you decide that your work is complete? Hessler: I edit while I write, and then I edit afterwards. I’ve always been a very thorough and compulsive editor. From my perspective, this is the hardest part, because after you’ve been through the book so many times you start to get sick of it, and it’s easy to let your attention flag. But it’s so important to do multiple edits. I’ve always felt the thing improve a great deal in these latter stages, especially with my last two books. I shortened Oracle Bones by about 100 pages, and I shortened Country Driving by 70 or 80. There were also reorganizations and rewritings that sharpened the books immeasurably. I find that this is usually the hardest thing for journalists—the industry encourages us to move fast, and people are conditioned to always look to the next project. A lot of books by journalists (I mean journalists in general, not just China journalists) have very good material but could have used another two or three edits. Often I pick up a book by a journalist and I can tell that he or she needed three more months of research and three more months of editing. Six months investment and the book will be around for a decade; instead they rushed and it’ll hit the remainder shelf in eight months. It’s like running a marathon and dropping out at mile 25. 19

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TCType: How long was the process from completing your first draft of Country Driving until it was edited and prepared for publication? Hessler: I finished a draft of the book in early fall of 2008, not too long after returning from the Olympics. I edited very seriously in the spring of 2009, spending months on it. And then I did some final edits in the summer. The thing was finished roughly a year after I turned it in. Relatively painless. The editing for Oracle Bones took a lot longer and was more stressful, probably because I was living in Beijing, getting my electricity cut off periodically and listening to the neighbors zhuangxiu endlessly. I can tell you that it’s a lot easier to write a book in southwestern Colorado than it is in Beijing. TCType: Have you written anything that you thought no one would understand without previous experience in China? Hessler: The books have all been structured in a way that I hope is intelligible to people who do not know China, as well as to people who have lived there. I think that Oracle Bones is my most challenging book, and there are some elements to it that probably can only be appreciated by people who have lived in China, especially a lot of the language stuff. But you know, there are always elements of a book that work for some and don’t work for others. I’m a very deliberate and conscious writer, and if somebody has not thought hard about the craft they probably won’t pick up on some of the technical things I’m trying to do. A lot of China readers 20

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won’t entirely get the writing, and a lot of writers won’t entirely get the China stuff. But if the thing works as a whole then most readers should come away satisfied. TCType: Since the success of River Town and Oracle Bones, have you found that you have more freedom to write what you want? Are you less worried about what critics say about your work? Hessler: I think it’s true that the first book matters most, in terms of response. As time passes you become more philosophical, and you realize that some people like a book and some do not. And it’s true that once you’re established a bad review is not going to kill your career. But then it never does. Any writer needs to tune that stuff out to some degree, and excessive praise can be as damaging as harsh criticism. For me, the main difference is that after River Town I recognized how important books are, and I became more patient and less inclined to rush. It’s like I mentioned earlier— there’s often an exponential payoff to increased effort on a book. You spend a little more time and it makes a big difference. And I’ve come to realize that you don’t get that many chances. A book has to be done carefully; you want the thing to last. I would be really disappointed to spend three or four years on a book and have it disappear after a year. I want these things to be around for the long term. This is why books are more satisfying than any other type of writing. Any magazine or newspaper story disappears; people can look it up, of course, but it’s not the same. It’s been nine years since River Town came out, and that book still gets read. I had no concept of that while I was writing 21

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it. I didn’t know it was going to be published at all. If somebody had offered me a low-level newspaper job while I was in the middle of the book, I probably would have dropped the project and taken the job, hoping to finish the book in my spare time. I didn’t have any money and I had college loans to repay. Fortunately, nobody offered me a job and I finished the book. But that experience made me intensely aware of the odd way that time works with books. I had a good six months to write the first draft, and during that period that’s all I did; because of the attention and focus the book is still around. But what if I had taken a job and tried to write the thing on the weekends? I don’t think it would have worked out. It might have been good enough to get published, but I think my attention would have been scattered and the book probably wouldn’t still be around in a meaningful way. So I realize the incredible importance of those six months. Ever since then, I’ve approached the other books the same way. My thinking is, do whatever it takes to make this book as good as possible. Nothing else matters as much. And I try to clear out distractions so I can focus. TCType: Was there a moment when you wanted to write something but didn't for fear of offending someone? Hessler: With every book, there are details that I left out because I didn’t want to get somebody in trouble, or I didn’t want to embarrass them. Often these are good details, but it’s never that difficult, because there are other good details. If you spend enough time with your subject you should have plenty of material. Sometimes you even get a second chance. With River 22

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Town I changed a lot of the names, because it was my first book and I wasn’t sure how people would respond. So one of my students became “Anne” instead of Emily. She had chosen her name from Emily Bronte; it was a good character detail and I regretted losing it. But I wanted to be careful. After River Town was published and I could see the reaction, and there weren’t any problems, I talked with Emily about it and she was fine with my using her “real” English name for Oracle Bones. TCType: Have you considered writing a work of fiction or poetry? Hessler: Not since Fuling. I was trained in fiction and originally wanted to be a novelist; I studied under a lot of fiction writers—Russell Banks, Joyce Carol Oates, Joseph Heller. But I believe that all young writers want to be novelists. As time passed, I realized that in fact I was much better at nonfiction. I like doing research, and my voice comes more naturally with nonfiction. When I wrote fiction it always felt a little stilted and humorless. For other reasons I’m grateful that I didn’t go into fiction. Nowadays most aspiring fiction writers do an MFA, and then they teach in colleges, or find writer in residence gigs. I had an opportunity to do an MFA on scholarship in the mid-’90s, but instead I travelled around the world, a trip that took me to China. And then I joined the Peace Corps. I went to China instead of sticking with fiction, and as a result I spent a decade in a fascinating, energizing environment, instead of trying to write fiction while living on an American college campus. Unfortunately this is pretty much the only way that a 23

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young fiction writer can support himself nowadays, but I think it’s deadening. TCType: What book needs to be written about China? Hessler: It would be good to have a first-rate book about Tibet or Xinjiang. But it’s so hard for people to get into these areas and do the necessary research. I think there should be better fiction about China. I think nonfiction is generally moving in the right direction, and there are some pretty good books right now, ranging from history to current society. But the fiction about China feels a little out of touch to me. It tends to be pretty heavy-handed and humorless, and there isn’t much evidence of deep contact with everyday life. I wish that a good Chinese fiction writer would base him or herself in a factory town, or a dying village—some archetypal element of today’s society— and write something that feels accurate and interesting and full of the life that we see in China. Filmmakers are doing this, both with documentary and feature films, but I don’t see the same thing happening with fiction. Part of the problem is that a lot of the best Chinese fiction writers are exiles who for political or personal reasons are no longer able to have deep contact with contemporary society. They write well about earlier periods but they don’t have a strong sense of what the country now feels like.

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Jim Davis, Jr.

Fog The fog at my feet is a rabbit Creeping through and over Blades of grass, clover Pawing in from the creek bed At the foot of the Tai Shan, Losing itself in the thorned brush Nesting among brambles. Confidently weaving through the cane palms. Curious, he approaches. Contented, he departs. Tiptoeing through the lilies Chewing a crystal bloom, Off to discover another creek bed, clover.

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Kevin Wu

Li Po

hy did Li Po jump into the river? In the Chinese legend, in the Yangtze river, Li Po the mad poet jumps into the river to catch the moon. He was drinking wine, and he was not plain mad, but mad with love, and it wasn’t a moon in the river, but the reflection of the moon, and after that it was all forgetfulness for him, but for the rest of us we all remember. But what it is to forget, and what it is to remember? Can the mad poet teach something to us to forget and to remember? What does he know about things such as remembrance, about things such as love? Has he loneliness? Is his music broken, does he listen to the cry of the bird which is mad sometimes, but which is love sometimes, does his flute accompany along the depths of his soul? One day I asked my teacher a question about Li Po, about his poetry, and how it is about mountains and rivers, about shadows and the moon, how he wrote about the moon goddess, in the night, looking up at her through his own brown eyes, thinking of an ancient song to sing to her, because she is the most beautiful, because she is what he remembers about his childhood, the stories his mother told, about heaven and the golden palaces, about the emperors and their dynasties, about the sons of heaven, born from heaven itself, here to rule the Chinese kingdom, the pure, virtuous, divine ones. If he was a divine one, Li Po wonders, what entitlements would he get, what responsibilities would he take on, how would he rule, or ponder on the poor hungry

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masses, in their brief and suffering time… Does poetry, I wonder, does the poetry that Li Po wrote, what sentences did he write, to write that high, such as the moon, why things can be so cool, like the moon, why things can be so beautiful, like the moon, and am I so forgetful, to remember Li Po, and all the dark beauty that he described… And I can remember, like Li Po, the loneliness of the rivers and mountains, as he and I walked along them, what was so beautiful to remember, the lost, the unrecovered, and to forget, all of everything dark and suffering, as to forget the night… And what is poetry, but the writing of loneliness, the salvation of solitude, in the middle of the night, of the constant and inconstant moon, of the moon’s reflection in the river, swaying and swaying, and I have forgotten what my pen writes, and what my pen writes, and I have forgotten what it was for the heart to hear poetry, every line, every recognition, every word… Tenderness, and the surface of the skin, ah, and the surface of the water, ripples, and every poetry that seems, is heard, and the knowingness of the beauty of the crane, or the sword; says nothing about who Li Po was, except his eyes, his words, moving and moving on the page that has no companion, every word dripped from his tenuous, mysterious mind, what was he thinking, the torrent was so peaceful, and yet it was surprising; my life was tumultuous, yet it was empty… The line of my life moves back and forth, forward and against, the poet, the poet, what was his dream, what was his vision, the ten things he says were mirrors, how he must not 27

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have cared, how he must have loved something so deeply, so deeply, so lost, how he must not have cared, as he lost himself… I have lost myself repeatedly, also, in the mirror, gazing and gazing, not at myself, but at the mirror, how it dances and reflects, as the afternoon sun falls, in that reflection of something that I don’t know, and things I know, how grace is in there, somewhere, given and received, how I don’t know of what’s truly beautiful, amidst the disguises of humanity, how there is truly no wonder in modern civilization, except with a child’s eyes, and I look, with fear and difference while there are only things that are fascinating, for a second, in June, for a moment… Will I know someone like Li Po? Or his poems? In summer? While the sun shines in the reflection of the waters, the duck creases across the water, the boat disappears into the lake’s horizon, a moment in the sun… I have many things to say but I am lost, I keep looking at Li Po’s poems to find, the truly original of the past, the truly inspired of his writing, and what I know, of the true poetry of his life, and his images… What they speak of, what they know and contemplate, how I must not know that what they are, at that time, how I must think and understand, their significance, now. And his sorrow, and his tragedy, and his madness in contemplating the light, surrounded by darkness, surrounded by the eternal… Li Po, you were always with us, day and night, the river you jumped into turned into silk and wine, you did not question, did not ask, for another death to accompany the moon, I was your hearer as you drank the sorrow of the wind, as you grasp and embraced the night, the echo of madness was your 28

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music and friend, you did not wonder at another lover, but the moon was your pain and longing… But can I hear the sounds of another crier? In this desert of sand and sun I cannot hear another voice, which would speak of nameless rivers of China, while drinking his wine did Li Po say of another poet, who did not speak as he drank… And of the river Yangtze, did it rise at the break of midnight, did it flood over with light with the tide of the moon, what did Li Po say about the river, about how it had turned cold… In the river where Li Po had died, where countless men and women had died, I brought my son back to look onto the sunset and, in the distance, a mountain where Li Po had written one of his poems. My son, who was a child of two, did not realize the significance of the experience. I, at the age of thirty-two, wants to tell him, that this is the distance, these are the great mountains, that is the great river, and the poet’s blood, his unwept tears, still runs through the river, onto the mountains where my eyes can see, his eyes can see, and, my son, I brought you here, to see it, and it is for you, it is your birth, your childhood, your baptism, and your first poem, written by a poet, told to you, always, from your father…

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Rob Schackne, Susi Niedbalski, Andrew Carpino, Doug Johnson, and Prasanna Surakanti

Exquisite Corpse Identical unfinished ink crying circles echo the squid link that made history of you. Magisterial blotting above the sands of time; the natural selection in thinking twice; it always seems to happen when the right time meets the wrong red light and the sirens. She arches her neck to scents that twist upwind and break off into the cold gray sky of a closing day. Shimmering in the sunblown glass skin while the light rest vaporous between two worlds. Water bouncing from skin to skin and I sit and wait for the light to change in a poet's rite to search and find the like of an apricot or mustard in the skyline carousel space within an acacia tree for mockingbirds round chase cut iron wood the acacia weeps whispering to Africa in the wind as bad as a tangled line when you're hungry and you're out a 100 meters from the shore.

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Contributor Notes Kate Bergen is 28 years old and lives in Westchester County, New York, where she works for an International Non-Profit Organization. Her works have recently been published in 2RiverView and The Battered Suitcase, and have won acclaim in the Greenburgh Poetry Contest. She is an annual participant in NaNoWrimo and ScriptoWrimo. When not glued to her keyboard writing, she enjoys music festivals, nature, singing and painting. Jim Davis, Jr. holds a B.A. in Studio Art from Knox College, where he was also an All-American football player. His interests continue to offer him opportunities worldwide: teaching art lessons in Limerick, Ireland; sketching the Dolomite Mountain landscape on the Austrian/Italian border; swimming in the Mediterranean Sea after football practice in Valencia, Spain. Jack Frey is a Canadian living in Beijing. He has received awards from the University of Manitoba and York University for 'progressive' academic writing. A piece of his short fiction will appear in Shelf Life Magazine. Jennifer Hecker grew up in suburban Los Angeles and studied international relations and Spanish at the University of San Diego. She has traveled extensively through Western Europe and Latin America and hopes to one day see all the continents. She is currently in final stages of editing a novel about her hometown while also developing another book inspired by the challenges in Latin American politics. 31

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Joanne Olivieri is a published author and poet. Her work has appeared in Parnassus Literary Journal, Soma Literary Review, Things Asian and Tango Diva, just to name a few. Her poem "Symphony of Lights" from her chapbook Red Lanterns was chosen as one of the 300 Short Listed Entries in the initial round of the Cathay Pacific Airways - 100 Reasons We Love Hong Kong contest for July 2007. Kevin Wu is originally from Guangzhou. He holds an M.F.A. in fiction from Brown University and a B.A. in English from University of California at Berkeley. His stories have been published in Word Catalyst, Kartika Review, Issues Magazine, and Visions Magazine. Magnus and Mingxing (cover art) run their websites MandMx.com and ChineseComicsOnline.com which contains stories about China and the first ever English-Chinese comic strip. Magnus is an American cartoonist from western Massachusetts with more than five years’ experience living and working in China. MingXing is a Shanghai local with over four years’ overseas work and life experience. They feature their son on Study Chinese with Ryan videos which are a hit on Youku and Youtube. They also offer a Shanghainesepodcast.

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