Another Bull Snake

He snacks in the junipers
on a mouse; slithers out
to see the lady with the lawnmower,
not noticing him at her heel.

He calms his churning heart, moves along
the wall, as if to say: avoid shit, not because 
I fear, but it is dirty.  

The lady stops the mower and scream;
eyes fixed on him. 
Uh, crap, he hisses with a shudder;
moves toward the rusty tool box to hide
under it; in a quick one motion, snatches his 
tail and a hiss. 

He thinks: how lucky, to escape the machine's maw,
saving him halved. 
She thinks: how lucky, the heel is still good.

Passing wind whispers: for them fools; lucky day. 

©Byung A. Fallgren

Somehow
Dorothy Chan
   
            for Norman

You visit me in a dream, after passing,
     after I've been awaiting you for weeks,
because Chinese belief teaches us our
     loved ones will appear when we are asleep.
It's real when I enter the hotel restaurant 
    in the middle of nowhere town I live in,
as the Midwest architecture transforms
     into Kowloon at evening time. We eat 
bird's nest soup, and I remember the time
    my father ordered me this four-hundred-
year-old delicacy at Hongkong airport.
     Out comes the Peking duck, and I ask you:
"Why did it take you so long?" you answer:
     "I arrived once you are strong and ready."
 
Dorothy Chan is a queer Chinese American
poet. They are the author of Return of the 
Chinese Femme (Deep vellum 2024) and 
Revenge of the Asian Woman (Diode Edition,
2019) and the finalist for Lambda Literary Award in
Bisexual Poetry, among others.  She's an associate 
professor at the University of Wisconsin, 
editor-in-chief and Cofounder of Honey Literary Inc.

Ode to the Pink Lilac 

The aroma, mingled with baby's breath, fill the air
of sunny morning or rainy evening.

Close your eyes and take a deep breath
of the scent; easy to Imagin love; love of Mother.

Rain showers over the bloom all night; fallen petals,
leaving only one or two clusters browned,
your delicate scent gone, it seems; but
what is that sweet aroma rushing in my window
in the night breeze?

I know it is you; but you tease:
who? me? No.
I still think it is you. who else bear such a fresh 
scent as fade away, like Mother's love?

Sweet, resilient aroma;
fills the round the old house, in the street, 
in the neighborhood; in the dark world;
as the bloom fade in the moon,
like Mother's love.


  ©Byung A. Fallgren

Midmorning
Selma Meerbaum–Eisinge

Wind, dreamy notes, sings
its lullaby, gently touching the leaves.
I let myself be, seduced, immersed
in song like grass.

Air shivers
and cools my fevered face
wrapped in desire.
Clouds drift by, scatter white ,
sun-stolen light.

The old acacia
leaves silence
a trembling tangle of leaves.
The scents of the earth rise,
and then fall back to me.

Selma Meerbaum–Eisinger born on February 5, 1924,
in Ukraine, was a poet and translator. She died
December 16, 1942.

June

The tall grass on the hill, she watches,
thinking, she'd mow, when a couple of
young bull snake pops out of the hole 
beneath the junipers, tangled for mating.

She gawks as he undoes himself to let his mate 
go down the slope, slithers aside nearby the tall grass
and gives the lady the way. 

She gestures and tell him: go, go ahead. 
He calmly looks at her as if to say: you, go ahead.
She: no, you first.
He fixes his innocent beady eyes on her: you first. 
she decides he won't go first, with his gentle manish attitude. 
She goes up the slope and turn to see him going down the slope,
and joins his mate, who happily heads to the pasture. 

Above her head, a hawk laughs. she smiles at him. 

©Byung A. Fallgren