Monday, 5 May 2025

4 Poems by Yuan Changming

The Echoes

The wind has blown away my voice

Yet I am sure
despite all noises in the valley

Those echoes
are my words returning home

Here’s a song worthy listening to


En Route: for Qih

1/ Attachment Detached
I thought you’re the home
To my little bird as to my
Large soul
But alas, I find
You are just another hotel
Along the long way to Dao

2/ Night Vision
As the tide surges forward
From the heart of the ocean
A tiny white flower
Is blooming
Against all the dark noises
Rising high along the coast

3/ Celebration of Sunlight
Stop, Seeker, and set yourself
In a moment of meditation

If you listen to the sunshine
With all your inner & outer ears
You would hear
A serene song of serendipities


Anagramming ‘Love’: a Bilingualcultural Poem

In English, ‘love’ is meaningless if anagrammed
But if I add a letter, it will become a magic word
Full of possibilities as in the case, say, where I
Take off my glove, use a clove or olive to write
A novel about how to solve my problem of ‘I’
As a vowel in a hovel in its laevo form; whereas

In Chinese, 爱情 [love] can be embarrassing, for
If I remove two strokes from the root-character &
Add them to my feeling, 爱情would become受精
[Fertilization]; so, I’d avoid saying爱你 [love you]
For if two strokes were taken away from the root-
Character for 你, it would mean 受伤 [geting hurt]


Nuanced Nuisances

Things I hate most about my life here: brushing teeth twice every day; happening to see my deformed face in the mirror; cleaning the toilet wall; listening to the endless self-promotional rhetoric before hearing what I expected but fail to get from youbube or tictok; trying to find a program worth my effort to kill time; giving up my whim to know what is happening in the world; deleting junk emails; garbaging the fliers & free newspapers; opening my door to a stranger trying to sell a new god or product; waiting more than one hundred minutes only to speak to a helpless recorded voice over the phone; cooking meat; doing laundry; doing dish washing at least three times a day; bearing the noise made by Ted, my elder son’s eight-year-old dog when he comes to visit me from seattle; aalking or, rather, being walked by, the dog during my stroll with it; making poetry and fiction submissions to various online or print magazines; seeing my wife’s long face; putting up with my younger son’s nasty attitude; seeing his messy room and shoes everywhere; in particular, having to take a dump when getting ready for a meal; standing long in the washroom before managing to pee out anything … alas, my life is really so hateful in this invisible & infinitesimal corner!

Now, in this antlike moment, is my life really worth living, Gadfly?


Bionote

Yuan Changming grew up in an isolated village, started to learn the English alphabet in Shanghai at age nineteen and published monographs on translation before leaving China. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan currently lives in Vancouver, where he co-edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan. Writing credits include 16 chapbooks, 12 Pushcart nominations for poetry and 3 for fiction besides appearances in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), BestNewPoemsOnline and 2129 other publications across 51 countries. A poetry judge for Canada's 44th National Magazine Awards, Yuan began writing and publishing fiction in 2022. His debut novel Detaching, 'silver romance' The Tuner and short story collection Flashbacks are all available at Amazon, his duology Edening due out in 2026.

Solo poetry collections:
1. Chansons of a Chinaman [Paperback]. Murfreesboro: Leaf Garden, 2009.
2. Landscaping [Paperback]. San Jacinto, CA: Flutter Press, 2013.
3. Mindscaping [e.chapbook]. Halifax: Fowlpox Press, 2014.
4. Origin of Letters [e.chapbook]. Chicago: Beard of Bees Press, 2015.
5. Kinship [Paperback] Seattle: Goldfish Press, 2015.
6. Wordscaping [e. Chapbook]. Halifax: Fowlpox Press, 2016.
7. Dark Phantasms [Paperback]. San Jacinto, CA: Flutter Press, 2017.
8. East Idioms [e.chapbook]. Cyberwit.net, 2019.
9. (R)e.volution [Paperback]. LA: the Wapshott Press, 2021.
10. 《袁昌明詩選》(Selected Poems [e.book]. Vancouver: PP, 2021.
11. Limerence [Paperback]. Vancouver, Poetry Pacific Press, 2021.
12. All My Crows [Paperback]. Grass Valley, CA: Cold River Press, 2022.
13. E.dening [Paperback]. Seattle: Goldfish Press, 2022.
14. Homelanding [Paperback]. Yakima, WA: Cave Moon Press, 2022.
15. Sinosaur [Paperback]. Hickory, NC: Redhawk Publications, 2022.
16. Englines [e.Chapbook]. Red Wolf Editions, 2024.

book publications + interview/book review in 2025:

1/  book review on Detaching (a hybrid novel; Phoenix: Alien Buddha Press, 2024; https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/218439414-detaching)https://tclj.toasted-cheese.com/tag/shelley-carpenter/
2/ The Tuner: 16 most moreish days in a lifetime (a 'silver romance'; Phoenix: ABP, 2025) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/226948243-the-tuner 
3/ Flashbacks: a collection of hyperrealistic narratives (short stories, Seattle: Goldfish Press, 2025) - https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1950276325
4/ Interview with ABP: https://alienbuddhapress.wordpress.com/2025/04/30/yuan-changming-is-alien-buddhas-featured-artist-for-may-2025/
5/ Interview with USask. https://greenandwhite.usask.ca/articles/2025/writing-makes-my-life-meaningful.php






No comments:

Post a Comment