VALERIE SENYK

Beijing Suite

         (i)
Every green thing stands taller
after the three-hour thunderstorm
and the air is blessedly clear

Children and their ayis emerge to play
on concrete still damp and puddling
Birds flit with joy in treasured gardens

I look more foreign wearing my bike helmet
but people in the street still smile at me
because it rained for them

         (ii)
I’m waiting for the cicadas’ shrieking song
in the cotton willows overhead

or the ghostly erhu plucked
by a blind musician on a bridge
straddling Chang’an Avenue

instead: horns,
shouts, sirens, tonal babble...

knowing so little; learning from
the sounds around me

         (iii)
the day like the inside of a steeping teapot
you could warm up a bowl of noodles
on the window ledge

a dense pall of noise
thickens at each intersection
muffling the slap of my approaching sandals

magpies in muted blues and browns
have stopped to eat inside the park;
everything feels stopped

this pencil is shhhh

Pilgrim Poem

I want a poem folded in my palm
like a handkerchief
saturated with the scent of rose

to recall a threshold strewn
with red and pink blossoms
beyond which there is no passing

forehead pressed upon petals
eyes turned to an inward light
whose gold burnishes my sight

I would become a pilgrim
with her nose dipped in her cupped hands
offering it all up

take me up<sup>*

*</sup> This poem appears in Valerie Senyk's
recent collection of poems,
I Want a Poem (Vocamus Press, 2014).

I Want to Dance

I want to dance again
before God
There is no one but him
before whom I can dance
These are his feet, his arms
His starlit skies hold
secrets for me
I’ve only to listen

I live to live in this state
Why shout at me?
I’m his not yours
You’ve never seen me
dancing these timeless rhythms
nor my youth held fast
in the speed of light

Valerie Senyk