Suburban Deer

Suburban deer are small to begin with and they fold themselves origami-wise, all willow stick legs, all so very long necks these delicate white-tail, to appear most undeer-like, puzzles of joints and tucks smaller yet, under the low branches in the way backyard evergreen shrubbery, the low Gold Mop False Cypress and the Japanese Holly, to daytime drowse in the backyards of the houses without fences, houses without children, without dogs, eyes closed or closing or barely open resting until the night, despite whatever the people hour may say, it is the season who tells the sun when to leave and bring the blue flicker shadow glow to the people’s windows, They unfold themselves, then, the suburban deer, unpuzzle themselves back to white-tail and will graze until the hour before dawn, the people’s clock’s hours irrelevant whatever the season, on tulips and azalea and every vegetable and peony and all the prize-winning roses and fruit trees thinking all the while, slow chewing, ears rotating to catch even the smallest of small suburban sounds the suburban deer eat the ornamental and exotic and think, “We were here first. We were always here first.”

Another year flies by...

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Fly Speaks

The cat said, "Yao" in a voice both plaintive and forelorn, a cry made to be abandoned. I have seen some cats in my life, cats on the street, cats dead in dumpsters, cats covered in scabs and parasites and open, pus-dripping sores, cooked cats on silver platters surrounded by cooked snakes as an expensive, showpiece serving of “Tiger Fights Dragon.”

"Do you even have the right to 'yao' like that?" I asked.

Silence, though of what sort?

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Los Alamos Quartet

(T’ang Poems, 4 words x 4 lines in English, Google translated into traditional Chinese characters, and Goggle translated back into English and so on and so on.)

1.

Each one of us

Is held to another

By the same walls

That keep us apart

我們每個人
持有到另一個
由相同的壁
這讓我們分開

Each of us
Hold to another
By the same wall
This allows us to separate

我們每個人
抱到另一個
通過相同的牆壁
這讓我們分開

Each one of us
Hold to another
Through the same wall
This let us separate

2.

Ancient ash, volcano born,

And my hometown now,

Ashes floating the slope

To fill the canyon

古火山灰，火山出生，
现在我的家乡，
灰烬漂浮的斜率
为了填补这个峡谷

Ancient volcanic ash, volcanic birth
Now my hometown
Ashes floating slope
In order to fill this canyon

3.

Over the long ridge

Down the long incline

To an ashy place

That once was home

在長長的山脊
下長坡
一個灰色的地方
這曾經是家

In the long ridge
Down a long slope
A gray place
This used to be home
 

4.

Glimpse my old hometown

Ashy walls now fallen

Grinding my red eyes

Watered, full of ash

看到我的老家
灰色的牆現在下降
磨我的紅眼睛
澆水，充滿灰

See my hometown
Gray wall is now down
To grinding my red eyes
Watering, full of gray

我的家鄉
灰色的牆壁現在已經下降
磨我的眼睛發紅
澆水，充滿灰色

My hometown
Gray walls have fallen now
To grinding my eyes red
Watering, full of gray

Once in a while, we poke our heads up...