We eat chicken feet and we are not dead Our bowls are rimmed with bats and fire flies Our feet pedal sewing machines making blue denim jeans We march in Chinatown protesting discrimination Corona virus has no yellow skin nor brown eyes We are delivery workers, doctors, dancers, actors Our ancestors memorized the number of doors and windows in the home village, whether our fathers had more than one wife Our foremothers sold their bodies…
Oakland Museum of CaliforniaOakland, CAMarch 16 – June 30, 2014 With drips and washes, color, photography and shaped canvases, shelves and artifacts, the art of Hung Liu in her spring exhibit, Summoning Ghosts, at the Oakland Museum of California, feeds the eyes. What a joy it was to be present with the China-born artist’s energy reflected in the retrospective, which will be traveling nationally. This exhibit is a coming home of her work spanning from…
My eyes follow themWomen in Burqas of gold, cream, blue,Burgundy, women unseen, travellingto a wedding party to somewhereIn KandaharHow do I know that they are womenExcept that only women wear Burqas,Covered from head to foot with squaresOf opening, netted or crocheted,Framing their eyesAnd even in their embroidered beautyThe intricate stitching of the coversOver their heads do not distract My eyes follow themChildren in cotton in colors of birdsTheir eyes fixed on the unseen viewer,Their eyes…
So you want to write. A poet, a playwright a storyteller, a magician! And to write, you think you have to be a sociologist, an environmentalist, a psychologist, an observer of human behavior, and a scholar too! Well, prove it. The least you could do is pay attention to me. How would you like to be covered up like this, not knowing the light basking in the colors of this universe? Go, go! Traipse around…