Chen
Chengli
Birds—To Blood
Donation
Silver
beak in.
Red beak out.
Silver beak in.
Red beak out.
Bandages around
their arms,
One Jesus goes and another
comes.
(previously in Issue
#4)
My
Babe Monster
-To Thesis
I was a child unfamiliar to
life,
Married to my blind passion.
I was pregnant with you,
My invisible babe.
You had been sleeping all day
And growing up silently in my
brain.
You were a gluttonous babe,
Absorbing my train of thought
And my happiness and hopes
As your essential nutrition.
Hence I got a migraine
afterwards,
And fell ill with no fixed
schedule.
My heart broke each time I thought of
you,
My dearest babe.
When my youth was wandering on the
pages,
My dream could never escape from the hard
covers.
In the labyrinth of books,
How dazzling I was when I kept vomiting
words.
You were doomed to be
malnourished,
A fateful freak.
My babe monster,
I gave you birth under my
fingertips.
You, so unsightly, but do not
worry.
I would apply cosmetics on you every day
and night,
Until the venerable professors hold you in
their arms.
Yet I had to hold a public hearing for
you,
And disguised you as a hopeful child in
advance.
I would shout myself blue in the
face,
Until the stern judges throw an unwilling
smile to you.
Those Were the
Days
-To a Knowledgeable
Friend
We meet.
And climb.
15 floors high.
We chat.
We debate.
We smile.
We share movies, stories,
Theories, melodies,
And unforgettable memories.
We msn.
We email.
We click, type, and type.
Then we pause
And listen
To a final farewell.
Chen Chengli
graduated from the Program of Comparative Literature
in Soochow University in Taiwan. He has been writing poems both in
English and Chinese for years. One of His Chinese poems
named "Leda" (麗妲) won the first prize of The 2nd Swordsoul
Literary Competition in poetry in
2009.
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