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Now with Five Full Pages of Poetry!

       Featured Poems of the month

  Feet like Shoes
 

Once again walking barefoot among this troubled path,
Mother always said, put on your socks and shoes,
The words muted by the strike of thick heels,
Soft on the top laced with bright veins and freckles,
Tough on the bottom browned and calloused,
Broken glass, stones that bruise, metal piercing through,
Even so I treat my feet like Shoes.
The blue of winter worn with pain and ache,
The red of summer swells them with searing heat,
Others shake their heads and fail to understand,
These are my feet made to be stripped, free, naked,
The crunch of grass, the joy of mud, warm sand between my toes,
I keep them clean these feet like Shoes.
Their always with me perfectly deformed,
Never traded for a new pair, never set aside,
Cherished as a marvel, eccentric in style, 
Form and function mastered in design,
They all say you must wear shoes, but why.
For excellent are these feet like shoes.

Candy Marie is a poet and a writer who lives in rural south Alabama, she counts Wordsworth, Shakespeare and the Psalms among her influences.

 

Epiphany

I wrote this at the request of Kathryn Rose,  
as the lyrics for a choral anthem.

 

I walked in darkness. Many a lonely mile, 
my eyes and footsteps hesitant and blind. 
I sought a kindly light I did not find 
in land or ocean, asking all the while 
if lightless lives are taken in exchange 
for light eternal. Still the shades of sight 
would whisper, "Even I shall see the light!" 
I never thought the light would look so strange. 
Not in a temple, echoing and awed, 
nor in a palace, glistening and grand, 
nor in my home, nor any friendly land. 
but distant, dirty, in a shed abroad, 
I met a maiden bloody from a birth 
and in her arms, the light of all the earth.

by t j a thurman,

originally published on his own site 'Gentle Readers'

poetry magazine, editor, Anthony Uplandpoet Watkins

...and now....

Better than Starbucks -- the Interview
Bruce Humes 徐穆实
                                        with  S. Ye Laird

From:   Canticle to the Land  大地雅歌 

The Story of Creation

Long, long ago

Sky and earth not yet distinct

Water and soil not yet formed

Darkness shrouding all.

No sun, ho! No moon,

Neither flower nor beast, ho!

And no love.

No Tashi Gyatso, Tibetan minstrel,

For his wings of passion had yet to unfurl.

                                                 — Tashi Gyatso’s Creation Ballad

A God from the East did come
Concocting from fire, the sun.
A Goddess from the West did come
Concocting from water, the moon.
The sun sundered the heavens from the earth
And the moon sundered the land from the sea.
The firmament like a dome
The land like an eight-petaled lotus bloom
And the oceans as broad and deep as
Buddha’s compassion.
The sun chased the moon
And the moon pined for the sun
Their love eternal, their destiny never to meet.

To our gentle readers, I was enchanted by the above excerpt of translation, 'The Creation Story' done by Mr.  Bruce Humes from Chinese novelist Fan Wen 范稳's third novel 'Canticle to the land', which is the last one of three volumes trilogy Fan Wen has written over more than 10 years.  I am most delighted that Mr. Humes has kindly written back to me with candid answers to my perpetual question in mind, the wonderment of how quality translation was done by professional writers.  We now present our dialogue, beginning with a reading and questions arise from another interview Bruce conducted with Mr. Fan back in April 2009 -  " A Century of Cultural Collisions in Shangri-la."

If you know a literary sort, a poet, an author, a teacher of literature, or just a truly all around interesting character, and you think it might be fun to  get their thoughts down on "paper". Let us know, if you have contact info, all the better, but we have our ways....

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