Sze - Sight Lines

Sight Lines ARTHUR SZE Note to the Reader Copper Canyon Press encourages you to calibrate your settings by using the line of characters below, which optimizes the line length and character size: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Pellentesque euismod magna ac diam dignissim condimentum. Please take the time to adjust the size of the text on your viewer so that the line of characters above appears on one line, if possible. When this text appears on one line on your device, the resulting settings will most accurately reproduce the layout of the text on the page and the line length intended by the author. Viewing the title at a higher than optimal text size or on a device too small to accommodate the lines in the text will cause the reading experience to be altered considerably; single lines of some poems will be displayed as multiple lines of text. Thank you. Thank you.

We hope you enjoy these poems. This e-book edition was created through a special grant provided by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. Copper Canyon Press would like to thank Constellation Digital Services for their partnership in making this e-book possible. For Carol Contents SIGHT LINES Water Calligraphy A green turtle in broth is brought to the table I stare at an irregular formation of rocks above a pond and spot, on the waters surface, a moon. As I step back and forth, the moon slides from partial to full to partial and then into emptiness; but no moons in the sky, just slanting sunlight, leafing willows along Slender West Lake, parked cars outside an apartment complex where, against a background of chirping birds and car horns, two women bicker.

Now its midnight at noon; I hear an electric saw and the occasional sound of lumber striking pavement. At the bottom of a teacup, leaves form the character individual and, after a sip, the number eight. Snipped into pieces, a green turtle is returned to the table; while everyone eats, strands of thrown silk tighten, tighten in my gut. I blink, and a woodblock carver peels off pear shavings, stroke by stroke, and foregrounds characters against empty space. Begging in a subway, a blind teen and his mother stagger through the swaying car a woman lights a bundle of incense and bows at a cauldron people raise their palms around the Nine-Dragon Juniper who knows the mind of a watermelon vendor picking his teeth? you glance up through layers of walnut leaves in a courtyard biting into marinated lotus stems in a drum tower, hours were measured as water rising then spilling from one kettle into another pomegranate trees flowering along a highway climbing to the top of a pagoda, you look down at rebuilt city walls a peacock cries always the clatter of mah-jongg tiles behind a door at a tower loom, a man and woman weave brocade silk squashing a cigarette above a urinal, a bus driver hurries back a musician strikes sticks, faster and faster cars honk along a street approaching a traffic circle when he lowers his fan, the actors face has changed from black to white a child squats and shits in a palace courtyard yellow construction cranes pivot over the tops of high-rise apartments a woman throws a shuttle with green silk through the shed where are we headed, you wonder, as you pick a lychee and start to peel it Lightning ignites a fire in the wilderness: in hours, 200 then 2,000 acres are aflame; when a hotshot crew hikes in to clear lines, a windstorm kicks up and veers the blaze back, traps them, and their fire shelters become their body bags. Pions in the hills have red and yellow needles in a bamboo park, a woman dribbles liquefied sugar onto a plate, and it cools, on a stick, in the form of a butterfly; a man in red pants stills then moves through the Crane position.

A droplet hangs at the tip of a fernwater spills into another kettle; you visualize how flames engulfed them at 50 miles per hour. In the West, wildfires scar each summer water beads on beer cans at a lunch counter you do not want to see exploding propane tanks; you try to root in the world, but events sizzle along razor wire, along a snapping end of a power line. Two fawns graze on leaves in a yard as we go up the Pearl Tower, I gaze through smog at freighters along the river. A thunderstorm gathers: it rains and hails on two hikers in the Barrancas; the arroyo becomes a torrent, and they crouch for an hour. After a pelting storm, you spark into flame and draw the wax of the world into light ostrich and emu eggs in a basket by the door, the aroma of cumin and pepper in the air. In my mouth, a blister forms then disappears.

At a teak table, with family and friends, we eat Dungeness crab, but, as I break apart shell and claws, I hear a wounded elk shot in the bosque. Canoers ask and receive permission to land; they beach a canoe with a yellow cedar wreath on the bow then catch a bus to the fairgrounds powwow. Sunrise: I fill my rubber bucket with water and come to this patch of blue-gray sidewalk Ive made a sponge-tipped brush at the end of a waist-high plastic stick; and, as I dip it, I know water is my ink, memory my blood the tips of purple bamboo arch over the park I see a pitched battle at the entrance to a palace and rooftops issuing smoke and flames today, theres a white statue of a human figure, buses and cars drive across the blank square at that time, I researched carp in captivity and how they might reproduce and feed people in communesI might have made a breakthrough, but Red Guards knocked at the door they beat me, woke me up at all hours until I didnt know whether it was midnight or noon I saw slaughtered pigs piled on wooden racks, snow in the spring sunshinethe confessions they handed me I signedI just wanted it to endthen herded pigs on a farmwait a masseur is striking someones back, his hands clatter like wooden blocks now I block the past by writing the present as I write the strokes of moon, I let the brush swerve rest for a moment before I lift it and make the one stroke hookah, its all in that hookthere, I levitate: no mistakes will last, even regret is lovelymy hand trembles; but if I find the gaps resting places, I cut the sinews of an ox, even as the sun moon waxesthe bones drop, my brush is sharp, sharper than steeland though people murmur at the evaporating characters, I smile, frown fidget, let goI draw the white, not the black Tea leaves in the cup spell above then below outside the kitchen window, a spray of wisteria blossoms in May sunshine. What unfolds inside us? We sit at a tabletop that was once a wheel in Thailand: an iron hoop runs along the rim. On a fireplace mantel, a flame flickers at the bottom of a metal cup. As spokes to a hub, a chef cleans blowfish: turtles beach on white sand: a monk rakes gravel into scalloped waves in a garden: moans issue from an alley where men stir from last nights binge.

If all time converges as light from stars, all situations reside here. In red-edged heat, I irrigate the peach trees; you bake a zucchini frittata; water buffalo browse in a field; hail has shredded lettuces, and, as a farmer paces and surveys damage, a coyote slips across a road, under barbed wire. The letter A was once an inverted cows head, but now, as I write, it resembles feet planted on the earth rising to a point. Once is glimpsing the Perseid meteor shower and, as emotion curves space, I find a constellation that arcs beyond the visible. A neighbor brings cucumbers and basil; when you open the bag and inhale, the world inside is fire in a night courtyard at summer solstice; we have limned the time here and will miss the bamboo arcing along the fence behind our bedroom, peonies leaning to earth. A