The url of another LiveJournal I will be keeping henceforth: http://zhuangyisa.livejournal.com/

Love being an element conventionally associated with the pyrogenic: too close, the self is scorched (the fatal distance of nearness); stray too far from the source, the self is lost in the dark, to the dark. Risk is the morality of burning things. Hold it in your palm (if you can); test it.

Two poems of mine just published here.

I make my way to the sandwich bar

to have my low-fat dinner

alone. I sit

behind the couple who

bench-pressed next to me

and pretend not to notice

this coincidence,

even as they reciprocate

latent desire -

I wolf down my sandwich, simulating haste.

Then I slip into the bookstore

where men gather

behind magazine counters

to examine body language ( Read more... )

Years ago, she moved out of the apartment she grew up in (left to her when her father died), and thought that was the end of it. It was a hurried but decisive affair: this was just before the divorce, when she found out about the other woman. When the papers were signed, she never spoke to Peter again, did not bother to “stay in touch”. It was ( Read more... )

Some facts about the longest-serving prisoner of conscience of the 20th century: click here.

And, apparently, one can buy photographs of him off this website. This enterprise reminds me of how Kafka has become such an essential aspect of Czech culture that one can find consumer products named after or inspired by him - such as "Kafka Burgers" - ( Read more... )

A critic's take on his critic, by William Logan, published in Poetry.

The crowd vacates the stadium.

Haste hangs in the air like a stench.

Back in the wings: the actors

store their props away,
their make-up still intact.

The president goes back to sleep.

The ministers go back to sleep.

Their cars are waiting.
The guards are in line

to clear the way -

Shuffling, our heels

make contact with our neighbours’

careless ( Read more... )

Barthes tells us

Photography is

“a wound”.

The ones that mean

something to us

will hurt us.

Like some sort of love.

There is

a photograph

of us

on my desk, taken on

our first trip abroad

as partners - not

“lovers”; not

“boyfriends” - partners.

Yet this is

what I tell everyone

at work:

you were

my Army buddy.

Who became

my best friend.

And ( Read more... )

A poem of mine just published, in the Fall issue 2008.