April 5, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments
Jaimie Gusman lives in Honolulu where she is a PhD candidate at the University of Hawaii, teaches creative writing and composition, and runs the M.I.A. Art & Literary Series (http://miahonolulu.wordpress.com/). Her work has been published nationally and internationally by Unshod Quills, Hearing Voices, Hawaii Women’s Journal, Tinfish Press, Spork Press, Shampoo, Anderbo, Juked, Barnwood, DIAGRAM, Dark Sky Magazine, 2 River Review, The Dirty Napkin Review, and others. She has a chapbook coming out from Tinfish Press, as well as a chapbook coming out from Highway 101 press this year.
Everything is For Seen
Perhaps I will jump from the roof she says. I imagine she won’t go and even if she does she can’t break like the precious bowls like the ceramic platters on our heads. No one wants me as in desires me goes fang-thirsty to the hole in the ground. She removes her dress. Look at me. Look at my scars. I am not worship not even a moment of it. I bend down so that heels are under thighs and I get close to her feet. She wiggles her toes arches her masses with tongue-strength with the energy of wood. I am her bale of rope I am what she will go on hanging herself with. Get up she says get close to my mouth. I can smell her throat but I am not sure how I know this how I know anything about her body. Put your head between my teeth she says and I do like this when I get inside the throat stench becomes stronger like cow stomach like goat brain like the desire of it. Do you see them she asks. I see six eggs pale as soap little cracks in their shells red rivers she said these are the blood lines and I need them out (with tears I think) please would you like to hold one would you like to go to the roof and have a throw
Education
Master is a silly word because what it means is that there are two. One is the master and one is not. This is the first lesson the Shekhinah tells us. We are told and we are given quizzes on this idea, which we fill out by coloring inside the lines of a bubble and when we fail with the idea we are to take the quizzes again. I raise my hand and say I am a student. She looks at me for the first time I am wise and I know this as a student should always be of an owl’s mind. I think this and she beats her chest and growls as a beast of the wood. I cannot see her eyes as they are not broken but sealed. She has been standing upright since she arrived and now she gets down to her knees and digs them into the ground which is not soft as it is from pebble and sand. Beneath her is the pool of blood which she bends down to and cups in her hands. I’m sorry she says again and again and she tells us to cup our hands too so that she might pour herself into our palms
October 15, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
Image: Tamryn Bennett ‘Aneki’, 2011
Poetry guest editor: Keri Glastonbury
October 2, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
Chen Li was born in Hualien, Taiwan in 1954. Regarded as “one of the most innovative and exciting poets writing in Chinese today,” he is the author of 14 books of poetry and a prolific prose writer and translator. He graduated from the English Department of National Taiwan Normal University. With his wife Chang Fen-ling, he has translated into Chinese over 20 volumes of poetry, including the works of Sylvia Plath, Seamus Heaney, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, Wisława Szymborska, Tomas Tranströmer and Yosano Akiko. The recipient of many awards (e.g., the National Award for Literature and Arts, the Taiwan Literature Award) in his country, he is the organizer of the annual Pacific Poetry Festival in his hometown. His poems have been translated into English, French, Dutch, German, Spanish, Japanese, Korean and Croatian, among other languages.
Translated by Chang Fen-ling
Black Sheep
Dropping out of senior high and fooling around, my youngest brother is the black sheep of us three brothers. Although he has a blue dragon tattooed on his leg, his heart is as gentle and weak as our mother’s. Mother, who has been riding a bike to and from work all her life, has been paying off debts all her life. She has wished her youngest son to stop going astray. After the several motorcycles and cars she had bought for him were all gone, she borrowed money and bought him another car without my knowledge. That was a white car, white as the morning fog on winter days. That morning when I returned to Shanghai Street, I saw her, with cleaning cloth in hand, sneaking toward the white car parked on the roadside and wiping its body forcefully but gently, as if to rub the black sheep into a white one. She rubbed and rubbed, because she knew the white car might soon be gone, and she had to sew the white skin on quickly before the black sheep woke up.
The Tongue
I left a segment of my tongue in her pencil box. Consequently, every time she opened it to write a letter to her new lover, she would hear my mumbling words, which were like a line of scribbles, chafing among commas with the movement of her newly sharpened pencil. Then she would stop writing, not knowing it was my voice. She thought that I, who had never spoken to her since we last met, had kept silent for good. She wrote another line, finding the Chinese character “愛” (love), which consisted of so many strokes, was carelessly written. She handily picked up my tongue. Mistaking it for an eraser, she rubbed it forcefully on the paper, leaving a considerable drop of blood on the spot where the character “愛” disappeared.
