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“What’s your earliest memory?” asked Ming.“Why are you asking me this?” Hua said.“Because it marks the beginning of your life as a human.”“You’re saying my pre-memory life is not a human one at all?”“Not in the sense that you’re a self-conscious individual.”“Well, you may have a point there…. As farContinue Reading

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“Definitely, I must have a mystic connection with cats,” Ming concluded. Otherwise, he could never understand why he’d nurtured such a strong ambivalence about the creature. On the one hand, he liked a cat’s handsome face, its quiet character, its soft and light movements as well as its grooming habit,Continue Reading

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The only reason Ming had traveled across the whole Pacific Ocean from Vancouver to Lotus Village was, hopefully, to see Chiung for the first and last time after he left his native place more than half a century ago.However, upon arrival, he found himself a total stranger. While no villagerContinue Reading

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Buried deep in the topsoil Of his native village, my father’s ash Was swirled up in a tornado, joining All the gods in Taoist legends high Up in the western sky. He certainly Has no idea if he can become a Buddha As he wished; nor did he know heContinue Reading

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Drifting like broken shadows Are the floaters illusionaryFragments of last nightOr shredded shadowsOf my own protobeing? How often am I temptedTo catch one of them With my inner hands! Yuan Changming hails with Allen Yuan from poetrypacific.blogspot.ca. Credits include eleven Pushcart nominations, nine chapbooks as well as publications in BestContinue Reading

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There is a fairytale told, and retold againIn the Ming Dynasty, about a coquettish fox thatTakes on the shape of a beautiful young womanReady to offer herself to a poor obscure guy Like a magician she brings rich food and wineTo him during the day, and uses her two mouthsToContinue Reading

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More than once in the depth of Darkness have I strongly felt The whole earth shaking But only to realise the next day There was no earthquake at all Perhaps, it’s because my deformed heart Beat hard like a seismic vibrations, or Rather, I am the only one lying atContinue Reading

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Still, still hidden Behind old shirts and pants Like an inflated sock Hung on a slanting coat hanger With a prophecy stuck in its throat Probably too dark or ominous To yaw, even to breathe No one knows when or how It will fly out of the closet, and callContinue Reading

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One most ferocious robber in the pond World, observes a zoologist, is a slim, Streamlined insect called the Dytiscus larvae: Lying in ambush on a water grass He suddenly shoots at lightning speed To his prey (or anything moving or smelling Of ‘animal’ in any way, a fat tadpole, forContinue Reading

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The frog has stopped callingIn the early light, but IStill feel the sound wavesSurging towards my mind’s shoreThough different from the frogsMy mother used to listen to whenI must have heard deepInside her teenager wombAs she walked at dusk from her first jobIn town back to her native villageTheir callsContinue Reading