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Poetry

	Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé
	PROFILE About me Friends (57) Books (154) Poetry (16) Prose (16) Graphics (88)

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Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, 10 june 2012

White Tower of Thessaloniki

“I was going up to say something,
and stopped. Her profile against the curtains
was old, and dark like a hunting bird’s.”

~ Thomas Kinsella

Sebastiano Ricci painted Artemis without wings like Potnia Theron.
Perhaps hidden or clipped behind her back. As if more fragile, less severe.

The lunate crown a high arc across her brow, deep curve of a sickle,
filigree designs like silk threads, adorned with tourmaline and moonstone.

An emerald cabochon, keeping in the light. Within its opaque green,
as it housed the world beneath its nephrite. Sanded sheen, polished.

There was no leopard in repose, or piebald stag standing by her side.
Only a coonhound and whippet, both looking on as if witness to tragedy.

Nana had the same distant look when she died. Of shame. Hands crossed
over her chest, jade bangle clutched in the left, folded letter in the other.

I stood by the bed. To say something too, but stopped in mid-thought.
It was Mother’s profile this time, her silhouette ominous, like an osprey.

What of history? How much of it a ready truth, how much an invention?
How much an unresolved fiction, like family and the mythic ties that bind?

Mother wore celadon, instead of a funereal black. A thick, woven cotton.
The same cloth worn by widows. A Mandarin collar, hidden buttons.

Of all women, the way artists envisioned, Nana loved Artemis most of all.
She had the same tan skin, and lean frame. Small hips, muscular limbs.

Artemis was her patron saint, Nana mentioned by the parterre beds.
A vision by the cypress as a girl. And later, when she had lost her child.

There’s no muting of voices here, no shuttling between different ideals
at war with each other. There’s simply the sitting, and acknowledgment.

Of something larger than ourselves. Of mortality, our small importance,
the way we act and tend to the everyday. The way we look at people.

And ask for help, and help in return. Artemis in relief, writing an ode.
Open heart. Finger dipped in iron gall ink, fletching pulled from an arrow.

* This poem is a reprint. It was first anthologized when it won second prize in the Hungry Hill “Poets Meet Politics” Poetry Competition. The White Tower of Thessaloniki was one of the sites of peaceful demonstrations in Greece, now known as the Indignant Citizens Movement. 2012 marks a century after the tower was whitewashed, when Greece gained control of the city.

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Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, 11 june 2012

casualism is a kuhi in the water

small life is beyond
mention, or examination –

the bald eagle mats its fur
relief of gold flare
bold starburst, a prominence

down the steps is an alley

today’s west feeling
like broken nails, storm door
brass hinges undone

up the steps is a garden

chance the ascent two by two
wall fountains at back
and behind them, a coach box

its sacred heart and secrets

belief like lost sound
how is the truth to be said?
believe me, monday

believe me, monday
this morning like that friday

mother coiling, silent wings

* The line is taken from Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “The Mother”. This poem was written as a response to and reflection on Brooks’ recording of the poem. It first appeared in the anthology "Writings from the Heart: Stories and Poems from Around the World".

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Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, 12 june 2012

for the constants of hokku

today big credo
not this leaf moment, white, washed
out, fragment visit

not the eclipse, pitch, pivot
when you look away, thistlepD

not this, modern rust
avenue talk to built crowd
loud and backed and stone

alone, ice, gin, eyes, ajar
pebble in paper, cupboard

not that, still life, sink
you in slip of pink, above
this ribbon city

but for memory, not now
cerise, kitchen, tile, dislodged

but today, return
unsaid the misshaping red
not landlocked and lips

are the whole pictures spinning?
prolix yet moving items

* This poem first appeared in the journal, "Scholars and Rogues".

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Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, 12 june 2012

two sonnets and starlings in a cluster

i.

near this gate,walk in procession
orange sand in front, in a crystallized state
sandals in a single row, in a single line
in a hurry this sandfly, eager desire
in line with recollection, if possible no more blood
if possible, a manipur bush quail
in sandalwood, fully mottled in front
a sandbank, an open stage, walls of pali and sanskrit
yogesvara and ibn arabi in a daydream
a greenery of many types, of a long past
of the same sound and movement –
in front a love spell, from long ago
as tentative and bold, as insistent
as the starlings gathering, scattered grain

ii.

love ties like henna, lifted inside, out
where? where? there, in the vial –
there, an act, an air pocket
an orange-faced orchid ignored
hard petals ready to break off like a choka
as light a sea breeze, as light-footed
this remembrance, sandbar walk for basho
yesterday’s dream, glimpse of ikebana alike
handwriting as arranged, fingerprinted name
hovering in the air, in gilded layers in front
the gold ornament, her bridal forehead
as clean a face, as removed of feeling
to look down at the dust and ground
the northern pintail, wings clipped to its back

* This poem first appeared in "Sunrise From Blue Thunder: A Pirene's Fountain Anthology For Japan's Earthquake-Tsunami Relief".

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Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, 12 june 2012

holy noise, etchings / across this year’s chinese garden

excitation à la mode, an applied form
spirits on the move
high water;
vibrations in a pursuit; a persuasion
a displacement of this type, static, charted
internal; a sensation, an oscillation

of functions now frequented
wholly
by the ancestral
pumps / chains / pulleys / turbines
a sudden wave, velocity;
it is time —
amoral exemplar gone,
quaker belts and springs

*******

on bourne bridge:

what did the boreal owls say?
what did the number indices say?
what did they say about wuwei?

the water running
and half the world
and afraid to fall in love;

the case histories, for example
a conversion chart

* This poem first appeared in the literary journal "Dear Sir". It was written as an ekphrastic quasi-transliterative response to a poem by Murari about Mt. Kailasa, described in Sanskrit Poetry From Vidyakara’s “Treasury” (trans. Daniel H. H. Ingalls) as “one of the peaks of the Himalaya, which is said to rise as high as or higher than the sun’s orbit… important as the dwelling place of Siva and Parvati”. I began this poem seated at the stone boat and tea house at The Chinese Garden in Singapore, a visit I had not made in more than 25 years.

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Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, 10 june 2012

Tangential: A Movement in Two Sonnets

I.

A poem is a mathematical problem, its craquelure.

Tonight, I will dream of Pissarro again, and look for him a proof.
He will paint our Montmartre in time, its thronging crowds.
Along the boulevard, its tall and naked trees. The cars looking like toys.
The sky receding into an unwritten script, a reduction.
An empirical understanding.
Of the other voice, akin to another person in the room.

He will overlay the archivist, who will be included as an afterthought.
The pedestrians will be walking east, inconsequential to his canvas.

Did we dream the same dream last night?

Art is, indeed, a revelation to the artist, himself a Euclidean space.
Art engenders a cruel but liberating double bind.
Art becomes the artist’s unleavened burden. And an ethos, trembling.
Its artifice an evolution. A created voice, that’s what we agreed on.

II.

Such consciousness, distilling into space and time, their fetters.
This, after I popped cubes of brown sugar into my mouth.
They melted within seconds, each moment like a digon.
The way Pissarro’s chatting women seemed part of their surroundings.
As light a mood as the calm sea behind them.

If there’s a cupped voice, it is as much mine. As angular, an inception.
Perhaps an anthropomorphized creature. Swimming. In mid-stream.

I dreamt of Pissarro painting Eragny, within a Penrose tile.
There was a burly woman with strong arms.
She had an orange blouse. She wore a scarf that arched in the wind.
There were haystacks everywhere, like gilded mountains.

Have these striae become an open letter to every kind of person?
And have you become a revolving point, an Archimedean spiral?

A centrifugal force around which these letters need their anchor?

* This poem is a reprint. It was first anthologized as the winner of the Cyclamens and Swords Publishing Poetry Prize.

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Other poems: The Object of White Noise: The Oak Park Sestina, a haiku is diego velázquez at home, for the constants of hokku, two sonnets and starlings in a cluster, nihil obstat?, holy noise, etchings / across this year’s chinese garden, casualism is a kuhi in the water, The Villanelle’s Window, Fluxus at Chelsea, Gertrude Stein’s Agnosia, this sky and its soft position and release, Horseshoe: A Sestina, Ut Pictura Poesis, White Tower of Thessaloniki, Tangential: A Movement in Two Sonnets, Little Girl’s Antistrophe at 27 Rue de Fleures,

Latest items:

Poetry

White Tower of Thessaloniki

casualism is a kuhi in the water

for the constants of hokku

two sonnets and starlings in a cluster

holy noise, etchings / across this year’s chinese garden

Tangential: A Movement in Two Sonnets

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