SHELLY BRYANT divides her year between Shanghai and Singapore, working as a poet, writer, and translator. She is the author of eight volumes of poetry (Alban Lake and Math Paper Press), a pair of travel guides for the cities of Suzhou and Shanghai (Urbanatomy), and a book on classical Chinese gardens (Hong Kong University Press). She has translated work from the Chinese for Penguin Books, Epigram Publishing, the National Library Board in Singapore, Giramondo Books, and Rinchen Books. Shelly’s poetry has appeared in journals, magazines, and websites around the world, as well as in several art exhibitions. Her translation of Sheng Keyi’s Northern Girls was long-listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2012, and her translation of You Jin’s In Time, Out of Place was shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize in 2016.  You can visit her website at shellybryant.com.

Kowtow

forehead

awaiting still the appearance
of a qiagban to mark my piety
my thoughts turn to you
– a beginning of my devotions

throat

breath sucked along the passage
blocked, the words that wish to fly
on a heavenward trajectory, me to you
– the suppression of mine for yours

heart

point from which all else flows
thought and speech mustering
as if for a final stand
before at last dropping to our knees

prostration

knees, palms, breast, face
all laid out on the earth
a single string vibrating
within the chthonic chord

~

Special Administrative District

names   changing
changing       hands
Khitan        Liao          Manchu
Rehe         Jehol
Japan
a buffer zone             shredded
absorbed by a neighborly trio
no trace left
on the maps we know
today

~

Not Your Business

it’s not your business, she said
when I commented on the pair
lounging nearby in the teahouse

then turned to the dragonfly
just settling in the flowerbed
with her lens, six inches long

~

Bonsai

tiny trees in robust bloom
azaleas’ varicolored blaze

yesterday
their prismatic symphony
had yet to sound

a short-lived song
silenced again
two days later

their voices
as I spoke of the hues
echoed in the setting sun
reflected in your eyes

~

a pine stands by the plum tree
at the pond’s edge
white blooms, a celebration of the snow
releasing its hold on the earth
laid over the prickly scene
of a more constant verdure

~

Fu Xi Temple

Brought here by fortune’s turn, hearing the whisper in ancient branches, I feel no regrets.
“How old is that cypress?”
“That one? It’s young. Four, maybe five hundred years. This one over here, though, it’s 1,300 years old. Give or take.”

engraved dragon
encircling a phoenix –
the twist of his blade

~

Horology

sundial
measured, moments
the movements of timepieces
on high; Earth’s flow
around her sun

hourglass

a running stream dammed
time, pooling at the neck
insisting on its trajectory
with each falling grain

clock

walking on its hands
we pace ourselves
its cadence prescribing
the flow of our days

timeline

life’s events marked
birth graduation marriage death
life’s days passed
in the spaces in between