A hundred miles from swells and tides,
planks flotsam a building site.
Trees practise for spring with first buds,
though snow survives in dumper truck ruts.
Shadows of girders lattice the light.
The beaked pick at dark tufts.

At twenty we snogged in a low-lit squat bar,
cracked glass guitars and dirge vocals a serenade,
one-mark pilsner our aphrodisiac.
We came back for the next decade.

This year you flew to a contract with change,
to a shift no longer in sync with mine.

Contents

Editorial – Reflections on an Online Journal

Poetry
1. Zelkova Tree by Bryan Thao Worra
2. On Giving Birth to Your Daughter by Bob Bradshaw
3. Ellipsing, Elapsing by Kavita Jindal
4. Whose Woods These Are by Eddie Tay
5. The Expat’s Partner: An Email by Alistair Noon
6. The Mourning Months by Shirley Geok-lin Lim
7. Smashing Up the Grand Piano by Martin Alexander
8. Spectral Questions of the Body by Lee Herrick
9. At Hac Sa Beach, Macau by Papa Osmubal
10.

A friend warned me the other day
Not to write about the zelkova
 
Or I might come back as one
And find myself cut into furniture
 
Just as things start to get interesting.
 
The other day the zelkova warned me
Not to worry about my friends
 
Or I might stay human
 
And find myself cutting furniture
Just as things start to get interesting.

This poem first appeared in Issue 1 (Nov. 2007) of Cha

“Everyone,” your mother-in-law, scolds you
“knows you shouldn’t use scissors
when pregnant. Do you want your baby
to have a cleft lip?”

You apologize for being a thoughtless
daughter-in-law. All scissors
will be removed.

You don’t tell her how yesterday you sheared
the hedges and overgrown wisterias.

“And put that hammer down.
Must I follow you around all day?” she asks.
“Do you want your son to suffer migraines?”

Tears sting your eyes.
“How do you know it’s a boy?”

By June the season will be gone
if we don’t write it this minute
we will never write it

even here hiding in the forest of your absence
I ask for no more than blank paper

Trees lean in to venture that I may wish
for a flutter of letters, or a scoop of arms
but I ask for no more than blank paper

soon the cart will trail under the open sky
all salty streaks wiped away by the leaves

Your gift of fallowness
will die out in the hot sun
and the season of love will be