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a shanghai poetry zine
edited & produced by giuseppe daddeo,
damon l. hansen, benjamin l. pearce, patrick schiefen, & stan vullings
cover art by aidan bra
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A Shanghai Poetry Zine
MEMORIES
Spring 2018
Michael DeMaranville What Would It Have Been Like to 4
Have Known You
Alina Levytska Path Ahead 5
Matt Bogorad Father Reads the News Alone 6
Clock Li 雨忆 (Memory of Rain) 7
Marina WitteMann An office worker trying to understand 9
the universe and be happy
C. Duhnne Cigarette Burns 10
Ina Isnaedi Beyond Karma 12
Patrick Schiefen Letting Go 13
Stephanie Hernandez Reflections of Regret 14
Heidi Berg Memories 15
Damon L. Hansen Nuanced Nostalgia 16
Jeremy Greene Interracial 18
Yoky Yu My Open Heart 20
Aleksandra Jovicic Сећање (Memory) 21
(translated by Gaga Rudic)
Fan Zhong Most Happy, Most Alone 23
Melissa Thuy Lin Mom and Leroy in NYC, 2018 24
Dion Thompson Adopted Father 25
Giuseppe Daddeo Memories 26
Da Han Effervescence 29
Robert Cooke Salty Wooden Air 30
Brady Riddle Some Place, Once Called “Home” 31
Myra Yuan Midnight Whisper - III 32
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What Would It Have Been Like to Have Known You
Michael DeMaranville
What would it have been like to have known you
When you were younger, whole? Before your mind
Pillaged and burned, worm eaten from within
Stories bubbled out, things no one had heard
Military pranks back in forty-four
What would it have been like to have known you
On the edge of insubordination?
Finding humor in the rules, while the world
Waged war and burned, worm eaten from within.
Aged memory of you, picking apples
Sharing a story I cannot recall
What would it have been like to have known you
Before faces and names grayed? The black walnut
Planted with the birth of your first, cut down
Chopped and burned, worm eaten from within
Everything that marked your presence, gone
Except family lore and faint photos
What would it have been like to have known you
Before you burned, worm eaten from within.
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Path Ahead
Alina Levytska
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Father Reads the News Alone
Matt Bogorad
It might have been spring, and I was
swinging, as children will do
from the set behind our first home.
My small chest was proudly swollen, full
of foreign concepts-
autonomy, independence.
As I flirted with loneliness for the first time,
you approached with shy feet and
the sun kissed your shoulders shamelessly.
What you wore on your tired body is
lost on me but
I recall the injured sound of your face when
I bellowed mid swing to
be left alone.
You had come out with that day’s paper, but really, I’d thought
to monitor my play.
In my dreams I hear the embarrassed frown of the lips
that kissed me onto earth and
I am sorry.
It is wrong, but I sometimes wish for one of the
links supporting the swing that held my body
to have snapped,
causing injury
against which you’d vow never to leave me alone again.
Then at twenty, the world went hospital white as
I watched the strong hands
of a faceless doctor fail
to pump your own swollen chest back to life.
And I would trade my teeth
to ask what the New York Times led with
those years ago.
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雨忆
Clock Li
若有人兮山之阿,被薜荔兮带女萝。——山鬼•九歌•楚辞*
巫山有雨落,
此语千年弱。
山水今如旧,
应是与君诺。
骨化山河间,
不敢忘君颜。
*:若有人兮山之阿,被薜荔兮带女萝。选自屈原(BC340-BC278)的《九歌》中的第九首《山
鬼》。
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Memory of Rain
Clock Li
If there's someone at the corner of a mountain, she should be beautiful with a
glorious dress.----《Mountain Ghost》*
The rain in the mountain comes,
with words of a thousand years.
The words go fading after years and years.
If you were the one who told me to stay,
the river of the mountain will stay,
like when I met you a thousand years ago.
Even if my bones become true mountains;
even if my blood become true rivers,
I will still remember you.
*: From “Mountain Ghost,” the 9th poem in Nine Odes by Qu Yuan (340 BC – 278 BC)
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An office worker trying to understand the universe and be happy
Marina WitteMann
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Cigarette Burns
C. Duhnne
I lit my first cigarette at 17
Back lit by a Swiss playground
Inhaled to quell the boredom.
The lighter flickered in the damp air,
Unsure fingers experimenting with
Vague impressions, channeling
James Dean, Norma Jean, Bukowski,
Nicotine tendrils that curled around
Caressing my faded grey hoodie
I tried my first drag, burning
Couldn’t inhale.
We traded stories and gossip,
Cherry blossoms falling around us,
Back lit by the Vancouver Mountains.
She blew out smoke rings while I
Pushed out puffs through my nose,
Like a dragon. At 19, nobody tells you
Philosophy and art and pain are intertwined.
We drank iced coffees and coveted
Those stolen moments, I inhaled
With faux grace and went home
Dizzy with heartache, head spinning.
I puked.
I tried to tamper the excitement,
Alcohol swirling through my veins,
Heady lights and too many bottles:
That Dom P, Grey Goose, Gentleman Jack.
Rush of crushed pills and
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His warm lips against my burning neck.
I sucked on the white stick in hand,
Consumed by the ashes that fell,
Pulled back into reality when they screamed,
“Happy 21st!” The Shanghai skyline
Glittering as they cheered.
I exhaled.
Sadness is like an addiction,
The numb comfort
The sadistic waves of longing,
I lit my morning cigarette at 24,
Cup of Joe in hand, watching
The clouds blowing past from my rooftop
And remembered being
17 and unsure, lighting
that first cigarette:
wave of nostalgia that burned
The boredom that never ceased.
Smiled. Inhaled.
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Beyond Karma
Ina Isnaedi
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Letting Go
Patrick Schiefen
Finger by finger
I'll wrap my two hands
around the thought of
Sunday morning white lily bed sheet forts
and faded old fashioned lips lingering below the navel,
and
your stained Old Spice scented t-shirt
pulled over my bed-head, worn on the train home,
crowded hungover loud mumbling delirium.
I will squeeze
the breath out of
late night underground pulsating lights,
secret salty sweat spiked head rushes
and your tongue dancing around mine.
I’ll douse in gasoline
beneath a lit Marlboro
Tex-Mex Netflix cheap wine binges,
laughing with food in our mouths,
talking and rewinding and talking again.
If the memory of you
was a photograph, a movie reel,
I’d direct the sunshine with a magnifying glass
and watch the glowing ashes float out of sight,
out of mind, out of reach.
I’d wipe the last tears from my eyes
and open my fists to
let go.
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Reflections of Regret
Stephanie Hernandez
I watched an old Chinese man stare at his reflection in the metro’s glass window.
Such a simple thing, I know, but for me it was powerful.
He combed his hair with four fingers.
Squinted his eyes every few seconds as he touched his face.
Softly pressed his hands against 100 wrinkles.
Deep streams of a life lived.
A tired face.
He stood in a puddle of memories.
I could hear his thoughts.
He yearned for better and younger years.
I could hear his questions.
“Where did the time go? Why am I still here?”
I heard him make a wish.
To “go back in time” and “truly live”.
I heard him count them: three.
The few memories that were treasured gifts.
The memories that bridged dreams and reality.
I turned and faced my own reflection.
I saw two or three wrinkles. I'm only 26...
One day I’ll dip my feet in my skin’s deep streams of life.
But I’ll smile. I love the ticking of time.
The only thing others will hear is my graceful gratitude to a Good God.
For the memory of this man on the metro that reminded me to live.
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Memories
Heidi Berg
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Nuanced Nostalgia
Damon L. Hansen
Recollection – is like a thousand-headed hydra with technicolor eyeballs alternatively
thrusting its obstructing heads into your unwelcoming psyche.
Recollection – is the continuous compounding of fragmentary segments of film reel
housed in a cavernous mind.
Recollection --- is an internal thrust of the soul --- wayward in serpentine movements
of agony and regret – backward in counteracting movement of rosy nostalgia.
One iridescent bulb in brain of psychosexual torment.
A second iridescent bulb of a glorious happenstance and hugs round the hearth.
Infinite moments appear and disappear in the depths of the psyche ---- invasive
inculcation of moment to moment flippancy ---- love thyself, hate thyself – be
present with thy internal self.
Press play on that moment of loss love a million bloody times until the flesh of the
dreadful deceased stallion has melted from the bones and the corpse has risen from
unconscious recesses to pre-frontal dominance.
Flash and in your face a soothing waterfall reminiscence and joy.
Flash and in your face the grotesque hydra of remorse and repentance for the
brilliant glowing spark of an amorous union --- urinated upon and extinguished.
Flash and in your face the glorious hydra of endeavors envisioned and accomplished
--- the steep mountain of socioeconomic circumstance scaled with ease.
Flash and in your face the deformed and debilitating hydra of persuasive and
plentiful popping of pills --- an abundance of Ambien and Percocet --- pills of
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horrific hues imbibed to deaden consciousness; blissful benzodiazepines and
awesome Adderall.
Flash and in your face the chiseled facial beauty of the hydra of moments of
insurmountable perfection and success.
In just three decades heretofore the hydra has hath sprouted a thousand heads of
vicious vacillation --- longing to be tamed but most oft thrusting into the psyche
eyeball to eyeball.
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Interracial
Jeremy Greene
When I was bout 16
outside the Palladio Theater
in the state of pelicans,
gumbo,
and sudden storms,
I heard a voice
of southern distinction
that made me turn back
I saw a girl my age (or maybe slightly older)
who looked as if she smelt of
vanilla and cinnamon
I gazed at her
heart a flutter
only to be shocked back
into existence.
A voice rang out-
“Don't look at her...you'll get yourself in trouble for that.”
said my cousin's cousin
who came along for the movie
“Don't you be lookin' at them White girls.”
she said with a hint of bitterness
and unripe blackberry jam
While practicing my California Blues
during my childhood
my pops tried to convince me
not to view love as black and white.
For a California kid,
who’s skin could match the image
of Louisiana soil
after August tropical storms,
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I always saw love
as a sort of pink cashmere.
Though sometimes blue
love was never black and white.
I remember a crush I once had
who was mixed
much like Creoles tend to be
telling me how her White daddy
would never accept me.
Funny enough,
here I stand,
16 years later,
a Black man
with the White man's “education”
becoming far more recognizable
than her White daddy ever was.
“YOUR DADDY IS BLACK WITH ENVY.”
I wish I said back then…
“I am black.”
“I am worldly.”
“I will paint this world in pink cashmere and blackberry jam.”
Those were the words I said
16 years ago today
to my cousin’s cousin.
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My Open Heart
Yoky Yu
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Сећање
Aleksandra Jovicic
заискри понекад стидљиво
у треперењима
у магновењима
дубоко из понора прошлог
између чокота похрањен
са мојим жилама испреплетан
твој осмех
одјекује непрегледним виноградима
расцепљујући земљу на пола
одбија се о сандук од тополиног дрвета
да те прогони
у вечности
у паралелним световима
мој врисак
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Memory
Aleksandra Jovicic
translated by Gaga Rudic
A shy sparkle flickers
In quivers
In twinkling
Deep from abyss of former
Buried between vines
Entwined with my tendons
Your smile.
Resonates through endless vineyards
Grounds splitting in half
Breaks on your chest
To shake you
In eternity
In another reality
My scream
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Most Happy, Most Alone
Fan Zhong
I'm dying in soil,
wrapped in dirt, breeze and a slice of sun
my family away
a dog barked in the far distance
I'm in the middle of a concrete jungle
I worried,
I imagined,
I pursued,
somewhere there is an old lady tidying up the broken pieces
a girl turns into flashes
a memory burned into flames
and I sit on the ground
trying to get up
I remember a time when I kissed a woman in the third grade
then I sat in the classroom
embarrassed
bashful
hiding from nothing
then I grew up
and I held a girl's hand
standing in the middle of a square
in front of a shopping mall
full of strange creatures
I looked at them and the one beside me
the sun splashes
there was singing and ringing
I felt most happy and most alone
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Mom and Leroy in NYC, 2018
Melissa Thuy Lin
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Adopted Father
Dion Thompson
Beyond a mortal man, you were ever so tall
Envious even to Sampson, how you could hug us all
A kiss of yours, anchored our young innocent souls
With a voice of lion, kept us in control
Idol to all, who looked and were amazed
So much love to give, and spread in those days
Youth and vigor, with rich black full hair
Muscled, molded arms, protected us from fear
Time now seems unkind to you
Kids mock, and threw rocks, who haven’t a clue
Oh, what a pity, if they could not see
What a statue you were, and still are to me
A story you told, when I once was a child
Crosses memory now, gives hope as I smile
Son not of mine, be the all man you can be
Strong, proud, and of all, be free
Reaching over now, back with a grateful hug below
A returned devoted kiss, only a father should know
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Memories
Giuseppe Daddeo
Memories
are made of
sweet gin tonic
sour as lapses
roller-coasting on
those alleys of mercy
which turned us down
the mysterious tears of life
They never surrender
just about always
wishing
for that next sip
that will throw this chorus right
rhyming on the words
you expect me to whistle
out of my fingertips
Have I ever been so subtle
to understand
what a movement of my hands
would have produced
Have I ever been so wrong
to withstand
what the collapse
of the universe
would have wished for us
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and when will I be so present
to be
even without talking
what I was supposed to
Up there
in the starry night
do you see the signs
where you hold your preconceptions
lost on the path
that moves us along
The secret of time is kept
in the riddle of my fingers
swiped
with the tricks of my mind
I handle consciousness
by the sound of its mistakes
I turn it into truth
for you to understand it
and when you’ll wonder
what you’ve missed
I will ask you
was it the answer
or was that unspoken question
Don’t be afraid to look
as when you’ll really do
a shower of drops
will distract your senses
and what we will feel
is the blast of all the nothing
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as liquid
as love
coming out of these eyes
Somewhere along the road
spinning like candle-lights
blown by paradigms of air
the secret of perception
is hid by some genius
having fun
in throwing
our lives against each others
like dices of salt upon snow
what will we remember
when life will all be summer
and days will come to end
Then
I will be
as it is already
before and after …
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Floundering hapless discontent.
Fervent aptitude, nor eloquent zeal.
Affable candor and simmering scent elude.
Tis blackened argent, forsaken lore…
Hence a thought filled beacon yearns.
Scattering reverent flotsam upon latent shore
… evermore
Effervescence
Da Han
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Salty Wooden Air
Robert Cooke
That ‘World Famous’ Brighton Pier
where we would eat toffee apples
atop salty dampened planks of wood
and hunt for geocache clues
that I had already found
with others
seemed an attractive place
to spend hungover dates
due to the cheap thrills
of Victorian slot machines
which let out heinous shrill beeps
that would thwart my head
and increase my pulse
(though never as much as you).
Weather was never great
but could be discussed
to fill time and silences (long or short)
should we fancy a gander
at the clouds and create
poodle shaped visions
of nonsense, and awkwardness.
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Some Place, Once Called “Home”
Brady Riddle
A distant train wails its weight into tear-heavy air
as I arrive at this set of tracks I did not want to cross
ties splintering slow as stones
I sharply draw in plowed earth, infrequently
cracked closets, the dying fireplace, the cooling stove
There are no unknowns in this house.
Not a creak reclaimed roller rink planks alerted
to midnight prowls to the kitchen, not quiet conversations
held in hushes by the ten o’clock news.
Heritage filled veins and fed dreams
not even the thunder across the road could shudder.
But somewhere between the first and final
glances in rearview mirrors and echoes of mother’s threats
we began to respond to freight trains’ rumblings, slowly
carrying pieces of our presence like vagabonds into the night
not toward tomorrows on down pillows
but to the cold sieve of departure
that terminates. Here.
Truth distills from pursed lips, turning small town rumors into adults
we disgrace in mirrors.
And these tracks lie as rusted whispers I strain to decipher.
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Midnight Whisper - III
Myra Yuan
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special thanks to: 李政燊, jocelyn ang, aidan bra,
milica igrutinovic, ina isnaedi, lina l’man, ivana maric, milena stamenkovic,
& marius ziubrys for their support and collaboration
passionate thanks to Ying Yang bar
for hosting the 5th edition launch event
for contacts and info through WeChat:
giuseppedaddeo
or follow A Shanghai Poetry Zine’s official WeChat account:
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