April 15~ JEAN LIEW

Welcome back, poetry fans, today SHINE has the pleasure of sharing two poems by Boston-based poet, Jean Liew. You may notice a trend in socio-political poetry in these times, which is of course welcome here at SHINE. Worth noting, as we explored in my most recent workshop, "Poetry to Foster Civility," poetry has -- throughout millenia -- served as an outlet for expression and a catalyst for change. Regardless of one's political persuasions, by reading and engaging with the literary arts (and arts in general), we foster civil discussion and a sense of community. Thank you, Jean, for sharing your words with SHINE!

Rome Untitled

In the last days of Rome
Nowhere to go, and the loss of home
The gouged bronze stolen from structures once true
Drab muddiness mars the memory
No more of the royal purple of some faraway Tyre
The half sons of mid-born soldiers go hungry
Number their ancestors in the great-fighting Gauls
Who came to combat with Caesar once
Once, on the other side of Alesia
These people who later saw the births of poets
Emperors later hailed from here

Oh, little Augustus, with the wolf child's name
How do you sit on your throne, so afraid?
Where do you go in these last of days?
When the bleakness descends and wipes all away?

And We End Here

Remember,
we were in school in January
and I said something about Jeopardy
and Desdemona – that I knew the answer.
Big claims for someone who’s eleven
who, days before, had marked the coming of Y2K
by picking up a phone at midnight,
listening for the dial tone as a sign
that the world was still okay –
but also, just to say that she’d done it.

Your phone is ringing on the other end,
hollow and clear,
but the voice that finally answers it isn’t yours.

And then,
we were behind the thin glass of an office
impishly watching the director.
Straw-ber-ry short-cake, she said,
waving her baton in short, quick strokes.
They played, straw-ber-ry short-cake.
Cho-co-late, whined the lost viola in the back.

The fruit blintzes made in anticipation
ooze thick and wine-dark with accusations.

Still later,
we ran across a street screaming against traffic;
pulled a coiled wire from a tattered notebook;
ate your mother’s homemade birthday cake;
laid on the rocky beach in the early morning;
waited out a deluge in a bus
until we could sit in stands in the rain,
eating candy and PopTarts out of a white bucket
over our sequined sashes and heavy hats.

The coffee sits, amber colored in its carafe,
deceptive in its brightness, a fly in the ointment.

And we end here,
when you never said for sure you’d come,
going around it for months
saying, Let’s make plans and I can’t wait.
But I still study on weekends, waiting
absentmindedly and letting things burn in the pan,
tainting the air with a smell that stays
while I inhale it, wishing all the while
that you would tell me
only that you remember what happened before.

Jean Liew
is a rheumatologist and clinical researcher at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center.

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