Sunday 5 May 2019

3 Poems by David Allen Sullivan

The Gift Horse
—for Isabel Augustine-Adams

The Korean boys take turns

bringing her gifts she can’t accept,

she’s a light-haired meiguoren,



struggling with Chinese the same

as these foreigners whose parents

all work for Samsung.



When she goes to study

in an unused classroom

they knock on the door before



entering. She turns away wrapped

sweet plum candies, a jar

of kimchi, a Bible, a hairbrush.



I’m only thirteen she protests.

Eventually shows them her I.D.

Afterward, they’re nothing



but polite, but she misses

the ardor of their missionary

zeal, the way the leader knelt



when he presented

a rice cake

embossed with a single almond.



Negotiating the Town of Xizhou


In the tight turn of a cobblestoned street

a BMW crawls past a Rolls.

The drainage ditch that once flushed human waste

a four foot drop that yawns beneath steel wheels.

On the other side slants a low stone wall

of an indigo dye shop. Side mirrors

tucked in so the drivers’ see an oval

of themselves. Have to trust the waving hands

of bystanders to guide them through the pass.
Steering wheels are whisper-turned, loud shouts rake

as metal reflects the other’s passage.

The shined door handles kiss, leaving a scrape

in the other’s silver sheen. When they break

free, the stalled crowd erupts, heads back to work.



Portage
The rumor that the Austrian energy drink is made from bull testicles is false.
—Red Bull website

In the hard blue morning light

my ancient guide proudly displays

two Red Bulls for our day-long hike.



I shoulder my pack and follow him up

the dry riverbed to a field where a yak shaggily tears

tufts of grass, grinds them as we slip past.



My guide doesn’t speak English, and I

only yi diân Chinese, so over Haba mountain

we’re reduced to thin gestures, the hard nuts of nouns.



I pull down Spanish Moss and ask for the Chinese name.

He brightens and plucks it for me, repeats it slower when I flail.

We stack our separate sounds over the same item.



His is a sonorous Sanishsloss. He smiles through his remaining teeth

when I nod yes. I drape it from the back of my baseball cap: Hair.

He laughs, pulls at my rasta dreads. Tries: Air.



He shows me berries, not yet ripe.

Another motion says: Must be ground down,

made pancake-flat. His weathered face crinkles with the effort.



He traces where we’re headed on the icy slope,

two fingers clamped around his cigarette.


From his mouth a drift of smoke whips up-trail.


Bionote

David Allen Sullivan’s books include: Strong-Armed Angels, Every Seed of the Pomegranate, a book of co-translation with Abbas Kadhim from the Arabic of Iraqi Adnan Al-Sayegh, Bombs Have Not Breakfasted Yet, and Black Ice. He won the Mary Ballard Chapbook poetry prize for Take Wing, and his book of poems about the year he spent as a Fulbright lecturer in China, Seed Shell Ash, is forthcoming from Salmon Press. He teaches at Cabrillo College, where he edits the Porter Gulch Review with his students, and lives in Santa Cruz with his family. His poetry website is: https://dasulliv1.wixsite.com/website-1, a modern Chinese co-translation project is at: https://dasulliv1.wixsite.com/website-trans, and a call for poetry about the paintings of Bosch and Bruegel for an anthology he's editing with his art historian mother is at: https://dasulliv1.wixsite.com/website.

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