As a budding photographer and someone interested in all art, light is essential - light, often fickle and fey, darting between branches of trees or overbearing and searing the eyes.  Without light, there would be no vision.  We would be merely sightless beasts.  We would have evolved d… Read full post »

Eurydice

Some say hell is a picnic
of burnt cherries
Still others say
the ants attack
and carry off the baby

I say hell is nothing at all
and may be just the ticket
for those who've been too busy

It's wind whistling through
a hint of a ribald sailor's song
you can't quite catch the words to

It's a… Read full post »

Homeschooling my Autism Spectrum Son

I am watching my son J rock back and forth in front of the window.  He is three and a golden crest of hair stands up on his head.  “Is he autistic?” I ask out loud.  Then I remember the kids I used… Read full post »

Before She Leaves

for J

A procession of dowager doves struts by
two – only two, but formal seeming

She stitches pearls into the night’s
blanket – her refugee heart humming
arrhythmia

The border guards won’t catch her
for Saint Peter’s rock
was but a chafing/… Read full post »

Dragon Scale vase by Lucy Simpson

 Fit to be Tied by Lucy Simpson

 Wrinkled One by Lucy Simpson Read full post »

In my youth, we went to China Gardens once a month, an unremarkable Chinese food restaurant in the city where I grew up.  My earliest favorite was sweet and sour pork, because it was like a cake-battered dessert.  Plus that orange color delighted the eye. 

In the eighties, like… Read full post »

 

When I am at Ann Marie’s
a thunderstorm is always coming
We race under the steel kachinas
of electrical towers
Hair stands on end – electricity
answering electricity
We reach the road
as the rain falls heavy
as lightning zigzags close in
We press our electric palms together… Read full post »

 Calla Lily

It is spring and we are losing our house after a long and painful struggle to hold onto this frayed American dream.  I walk past the neighbor’s yard with its calla lilies like withered brides and down past my friend’s house with its deep blue… Read full post »

That Always Gets Him

I become paler than glass in a dream
I float up like steam
past tall factory towers
into a gray beginning
up to pall-bearer angels
and weak-lipped saints
Jesus sits in a Lazy-Boy chair
finally relaxing
after all his suffering
He finally doesn’t… Read full post »

flowers look wounded

Every year, spring felt like the greatest insult to me, as if the sun was shining too brightly on all my imperfections.  It was harder to hide in doors, harder to cover my body in bulky coats.  The very brightness of the flowers… Read full post »

My mother lays out the plaid wool coats
Green for the eldest, blue for the middle
And yellow for me
She places the ribbon and flower combs
By each coat and lays out white gloves
She removes my curlers, untangling
The weave of fine hair around pink plastic
I howl and pull my head away
The curls bob in… Read full post »

I watch, head nestled with door jamb
my daughter playing dolls
She holds each lucky one
sings each the song I sing her to sleep
her voice just out of a baby’s cry
She swaddles each one in a towel
and then lays each by its sister
on the flat prairie of bed

 Then she… Read full post »

The Juggler Henry

Henry walks in.  Henry walks out
of my dream
In and out of white, high-ceilinged rooms
with rectangular, light-filled windows
tabula rasa moments
past golden onion-domed buildings
in the autumn pelting rain
on cobblestone streets with stones
exposed… Read full post »

A few weeks ago while I was in Portland at the Lan Su Gardens' tea house, I had the pleasure of trying their tea-smoked eggs.  The dish was a dazzling infusion of flavors.  Still it was far lovelier to look at than it was to eat.  The texture was decidedly mealy.  … Read full post »

 
Path of Thorns by Lucy Simpson

My son is nine-years-old, skinny and tall with a mop of golden hair and a gaze that is like a gas flame.  When he was a baby he was always laughing and crying.  He always needed to be held.  It could be he sensed… Read full post »

 Union Station, Portland, Oregon, Lucy Simpson

 Train Travel

Whispers of ghost travelers
in dark sensible travelling clothes
with suit… Read full post »

“But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.” KJV 19:26

Chips of her wind-eroded trachea
blew away with the wind
over dust-storm sands

Thousands of years pass
A/… Read full post »

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Dan Dan Noodles


This dish, a combination of sweet, sour and spicy, used to be a very popular street snack in Sichuan before the Cultural Revolution.  The name Dan Dan, refers to the pole venders would carry over their shoulders, their ware… Read full post »

Veins and Blemishes

a leathery leaf - evergreen
red pulsing
neon green glow

the woods

the woods waited for me
I could not say the same
shadows and light
a path - concrete river
turning

the sea of grass

nature repeats
still swells
in a sea of grass
shadows of limbs

twisting limbs

c… Read full post »

scene in which the girl escapes

(for myself at sixteen)

The girl got off of the bus and walked into the bar
because she saw lights and was tired of darkness
because she wanted to have a coke
The narrator watched her walk lightly through the butterfly/… Read full post »

Earlier this week, I settled in to my kitchen to make a three course meal for my family.  The weather in Seattle had turned cold and a few snowflakes fluttered down to complete the illusion of winter's last grasp. 

Pork belly is a very cheap cut of meat.  The Chinese,… Read full post »

 The Snake-Handler’s Daily Ritual

I am her audience in this dim hour
time of singeing winter elms
stretched like wooden aunts
and lost embers among tree trunks
in the brown grass of October

Her thin birch fingers
yellow-tinged
unclasp her taciturn bun
and auburn currents fall
loose with/… Read full post »

Hippolyte, Roman Sculpture

For awhile during school, it seemed I always needed summer school for math, that awful thief of June summer mornings that left me returning home in the oppressive heat of the day. One summer when I was eleven, it was decided that I would… Read full post »

Abalone Soup

In Chinese cooking, soup is the first course, so it is usually a light and tasty affair.  For the busy chef, making a three or four course meal nightly is too daunting a task, so here you have my take on a traditional Chinese soup.  I modified… Read full post »

Every Chinese New Year my father would take my sister and me down to Washington DC’s tiny Chinatown.  We’d ride past old brownstone row-houses.  I’d admire the glittery dress of the women, not knowing they were prostitutes, at least according to my mother.  Some of th… Read full post »