Long Way From My Home
Must have been the river
that got me lost, and something
on the railroad track I cut across
that punctured my bike’s front tire,
so by the time the stranger mapped
where I was on his phone app
our apartment was miles off.
Made myself push the bike,
but its wheel-light throbbed only
when its gear rubbed against
the flat flop of the front tire
as it groaned through each forced
rotation—dark rising from factories,
chattering workers pedaling past.
Imperfectly Enlightened
Dragonfly bombardiers nip and tuck
into the flying feast of lesser insects
who can’t match their sideways glides,
their lack of signals when wings
reverse and they veer backwards,
while bug-eyed frogs crouch below
like mortar charges, scrolled tongues
tacked to the front of their mouths, ready
to snag low-flyers, and bats burgle Guilin’s
gloaming. I’m grateful for mouths that save me
from insects’ sucking, but bless this flurry
only when my blood’s spared. I imagine
prayers prayed by those beyond me, picture
the statue-still Buddhist monk’s tight lips
praising the mosquito needling his hand.
Trekking Tiger-Leaping Gorge
My love strokes the back of my hand
as we hike. It’s nothing. A paper thin
slide over the mountains and rivers
of my veins. Our kids walk ahead.
Jules is unwinding a story for Mina
in which she’s chosen to be an elf,
has to calculate where to leap,
how to land. The trail switchbacks,
so now their feet pass near our heads.
Below, the low knock of stone on stone
as last night’s rain rolls them downriver.
We walk in and out of mountain shadows.
My love’s eyes are on our children
but her hand tenders me.
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.
Must have been the river
that got me lost, and something
on the railroad track I cut across
that punctured my bike’s front tire,
so by the time the stranger mapped
where I was on his phone app
our apartment was miles off.
Made myself push the bike,
but its wheel-light throbbed only
when its gear rubbed against
the flat flop of the front tire
as it groaned through each forced
rotation—dark rising from factories,
chattering workers pedaling past.
Imperfectly Enlightened
Dragonfly bombardiers nip and tuck
into the flying feast of lesser insects
who can’t match their sideways glides,
their lack of signals when wings
reverse and they veer backwards,
while bug-eyed frogs crouch below
like mortar charges, scrolled tongues
tacked to the front of their mouths, ready
to snag low-flyers, and bats burgle Guilin’s
gloaming. I’m grateful for mouths that save me
from insects’ sucking, but bless this flurry
only when my blood’s spared. I imagine
prayers prayed by those beyond me, picture
the statue-still Buddhist monk’s tight lips
praising the mosquito needling his hand.
Trekking Tiger-Leaping Gorge
My love strokes the back of my hand
as we hike. It’s nothing. A paper thin
slide over the mountains and rivers
of my veins. Our kids walk ahead.
Jules is unwinding a story for Mina
in which she’s chosen to be an elf,
has to calculate where to leap,
how to land. The trail switchbacks,
so now their feet pass near our heads.
Below, the low knock of stone on stone
as last night’s rain rolls them downriver.
We walk in and out of mountain shadows.
My love’s eyes are on our children
but her hand tenders me.
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.