TRIOS

Hanzhou Pang

Two squirrels spiral my eyes up the soaring space

two spruces erect back to back beside the sign

of stop. No single branch in between,

one straight breath, hundreds of years flash

at the parting commuters who walk like wheels.

A third spruce stands fast to one of the couple,

in narrower space they intertwine each hand:

to vie for the static erection behind,

to ally against the joint of a sidewalk and trail

that squeezes the threesome for human feet.

No clues from the squirrels that disappear

from the still tips but sniff at this end

of the draping arm and recoil from my pant

of sight. Long we contend, one to a pair,

in the canopy stretching for the due years.

A Letter to a Uigur Shepherdess

Hanzhou Pang

To run fast does not catch less rain,

so I post my words to the azalea

who, in breezes, mouthed your replies.

The inks trickle to the leaves, each melt

sad yet better diction. Long I chew

on a straw as each traces the right vein.

I wonder what drips on my mouth,

what goes to grasses if you recall horseback

and breathe. On Flame Hill, you hold the race,

will my salt to the air sweeten the neighs?

Eyes in Love

Hanzhou Pang

My eyes walk with you along the wall,

two rabbits when you skip to school,

two forget-me-nots when you first blush

at two mating cattle of red breed

at the hybrid unit. People talk about us,

you leave and wave to a couple of magpies.

My eyes burn with you along the breastwork,

for the flowers guns crack out of fresh hearts,

for the deer, the boar, the moose, the muntjac

that lie down to accept a life that hurts.

My eyes tap with you along the city banister

your clothes, shoeshine, gloves, tissue paper,

along railings and networks of court and park,

sparkling on your curls and the spray arc.

Great Wall. We lay our union on a rampart

to breathe the air of two thousand years.

My eyes billow with you along the sea bulwark,

laughing tears, netting edges, flux of return.

Across the Pacific, along the parapet of a brook,

a crabgrass, a lilac under your knitted brow,

my eyes fondle with you along the barricade

of water your changed eyes and hair try to hide.

My eyes sip with you along the balustrade

of a backyard herbs of dried grace.

My eyes invite you to the wooden hedge

where our frowned grins release a leaf out of a bruise.  

Then my eyes follow you across the wattle,

a free horse offering mane,

a wolf on outcrop to sing for the moon.

When you bite the lip to kick a pebble

into the river, my eyes gape with your anger

at the fences and roads. When you lean over

the cracks, I peer in light on tiptoe

budding my eyes for your glow.

Yet overstretched, my pupils see you no more.

You are a phantom, tapping every hard floor.

The Solitary Walker

Hanzhou Pang

When the squirrel dangles across the road,

Yi trips on a fallen apple near the sidewalk

and gasps for shame at a large pile at the root:

green on top, shriveled at bottom, even the ants

shake their heads for such an organic waste.

On the tree, the remnants hang the warning

for the passing cars, each racing to a new tip

of the concrete tongue: food for a walking person

only prolongs misery if fuel is the hunger of this world.

"I don't drive!" Yi mocks his own reply at the job interview.

His hand withdraws to cover his eyes. The first shower

of dirt from a car spits on him, and he sneezes with awe:

such fast crawling, eating to walk, each spurt five times

his life. And a growing tail to fart into the sky-

such color and sound grip the very end of his heart.

The squirrel must feel the same, and makes a third trip

across the road when the second shower spreads up.

"Pale envy, boneless thinker," he says to the squirrel

who carries the advice in its mouth and shoots up the apple.

A bulldozer loses patience on its fourth attempt.

Its truth is a flat tribute to the drift, dripping for the sun,

Vaporing as an apple rolls to its open eyes.

Scale of Skulls

Hanzhou Pang

Frank Museum. Arts overflow the natural history

pale blue in the fluorescence. Moony smell

for noses to sniff at nostrils of ancient air.

The neat heals, polished before the mannequin

of dyed yellow hair at the Antique store next door,

tap the marble floor, the dinosaur skeleton

at the center raising fiction and fact along its tail

high to the ceiling-an X-rayed past.

A giant modern emaciation: skeletons, skulls,

scientists masoning bones. Skull enlightenment

flickering Blumenbach, White in the Hominoid Hall:

A Georgian degeneration to Asian, African, Ape,

to a Caucasian gradation from Ape, African, Asian

-Aryan-Kant saved the chill for the Germanic kin

when Lappish tans discredit blue eyes and white skin

earned under aurora borealis. A makeshift of new world

for sails and guns to thicken or bleach human blood:

India-East and west; America-North and South.

Now the bones, white in the missing parts, unite eyes.

No quarrel over the protrusion of jaw profiles

to measure the eating grace in distance of food.

No wounds for the Vaseline. Fragrant, dexterous,

a teen's finger points at the void in the braincase:

"How much do we owe what happened an hour ago?

This one sells only four hundred at Homo Faber."

Hanzhou Pang. MFA in creative writing (2002), PhD in English (pending). Author of Eyes in Light (2007), a collection of poems. Translator of Money Eaters (an Australian novel), McKenn (an analytic book), and other materials that were published in China. “The Elevated Terrace”, a short story, is collected in Monkey Lake, a chapbook.