Josh Stenberg
(Canada)
prophet in the state of são paulo
she got off the bed, where she had been languishing,
complaining about the heat and her lot and my,
what was it?, brutality or indifference— i forget,
or the fact that i was not as manly as some on
television, or the fact that i did not have a
car. she would have liked to learn to drive, to
get more easily to the mall, to see her cousin in
mogi das cruzes. there are many things to
be desired, and never time, or the right man,
or the proper amount of royalty. she stood behind
the bed and looked at this poem and said don’t
think for a moment i can’t tell what you’re doing
typing typing you call that work and i said
how can you tell you can’t read and she said you’re
writing a list. i said a list like what a shopping list of all
the garbage you think i should buy you but she said
you’re writing a list of all the things you hate
about me, there—what’s reading got to do with it?
yangtze spring festival
though often—huddled against the radiator—
moaning the delay of overpraised and underachieving
spring—we cursed the archer, who might have left
us several of the former suns—and the goddess, who
cannot mend our chasm—and the ancestors, entableted
in faraway demanding villages, screaming their due
of money, smoke, and sex. peppers on our doors.
petals on the beds. the new year is come—and
the demon is at the river landing—there are no gates
to a town—and the generals on our doors are made
of paper and another year’s faith—with fortune upside-
down, though not arriving—and birds and men
and snakes of sugar—rabbit lanterns—a new divinity
every quarter-mile—for retribution in dusty courts
of justice in the moon-and-woman-world. meanwhile,
they had no living children—despite the months
and smallpox names. they said it casually. grandfather
lying gasping by the only fire, his chest compressed
from the weight of the blankets—the little
ghosts traipsed in to play with ghastly tops and
stick-rolled-rings. bells—hanging armoured-van-hubcaps—
rung from underneath the poplar to school—and
in the other palaces, dancing women, all beauty
being snakes and demons. the dragon emerges from
the sky, but vanishes instantly in the well…
and we are left, concatenations, conflagrations,
conurbations, clusters of conscious succession,
sections of being, always disloyal to the past,
obsolete towards the future, disbelieving in the
fleeted and coming but never being
fugue.
turns out you can still
turns out you can still sit by the qinhuai river—among
the molded concrete panda sculptures from the centenary
art school and on the boardwalk created for lovers in the
day and—somehow their reincarnation—drunks like us
by night. zhang li says no one comes here because it’s free.
light clatters down from new bridges, branding the water
like a bar code. lamps between willows streak cross the
surface like upside-down fountains. there are so many
things—perhaps even us—just short of beauty—but they
are too lurid, or brief, or sad, or small. of course the fault
lies with us, the cataracts of our eyes and rivers. even in
a handful of water, the moon is surprisingly small, empty.
no one admiring would drown himself for it. the tv tower
showing violet against the never-darkened skies, looms like
some laughable terror. a peanut shell falls in, drifts along.
i see a shadow or an ant or maybe just its own fibre trapped
inside the filling vessels on the poison course.
all the pretty plane trees of nanking
when this was the capital the french gave nanking plane trees
which were planted evenly along the avenues
these provided shade and a european touch
urban planning for a republic that never quite obtained
and so a century dwindles above them in gunfire flags and fogs
even the subway hasn’t even uprooted them all yet
it’s hard to know what to wish for in a case like that
health and beauty are such backbiting sisters
every year people will say as for me i don’t usually have allergies
but this spring i don’t know why i wake up my eyes streaming
every spring we have forgotten the venomous dowry
and the city kids must for shade and beauty seasonally ritually choke
the eyes swell shut the gaze is sealed in
the pollen goes into your throat and it blocks the passage of air
it builds up and the trees occlude your intake
life becomes a blind and labored narrow strait
blocked by reproduction
promiscuous history is a gift from abroad pollinating
propagating itself and my throat is thickening closing filling
the proliferating past gets into my airways and staunches my blood, my line.
the past the leafy beautiful past picturesquely strangling its children.
on visiting old flames
he had become an old man
left his teenage daughter playing on the computer
took his smokes
we walked around a bit
between the gritted blocks
on the crowded streets
bought some candy his wife wanted
i said so now we’re the kind
of grubby old fogey
who doesn’t mind wearing
pyjamas in public?
the whole world is your bedroom?
no it’s because the whole world
is not my bedroom he said
unlike some people i know
there was a beat there i guess
and i felt the smart from the pavement
on account of my cheap shoes
with the holes where i get wet when it rains
we had no choice but to
have a good laugh then
because how else can you stay
friends with old settled scurvy pyjama men
you once knew and loved
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BIO
Canadian-born, Josh Stenberg divides his time between Asia, Europe, and North America. He writes fiction and poetry, and works as an academic, translator and interpreter (Chinese-English, Chinese-French). Recent credits include The Antigonish Review, The Queen’s Quarterly, Contemporary Verse 2 and Estuaire.