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After a bereavement leave, I'm attempting to get back to work today by letting a little light through the cracks...and I can think of no better way to do that, than by welcoming the talented Terri McCord to SHINE International Poetry Series. Terri, who is an active member of the online poetry community, brings us: Bones As, The So-Called Angels, and Thinking of Recapitulation. Thank you, Terri, for sharing your work with SHINE. Bones AsOars, as walking sticks, as javelines, as fire stirrers, as magnets for clean-pickers, bones as canes, as door proppers, bones as reading material, as paperweights, bones as clothes hangers, bones as stock for soup, bones as sustenance, bones for clearing the air, bones as a compass, bones as a tell, the hands on a clock, bones as batons, or weapons of choice, bones as a guide to nonsense or mishmash, bones as what breaks the silence, what pins the heart, bones as a method of exchange rate all their own, what cracks the ceiling. The So-Called Angels have come down to look for what sanctuary is left or space to hide in snow where they can make their own snow angels and disappear or turn verdigris and frozen in a cemetery become the sculptures in town squares become placid as dammed water or silence their screams as we move around without them Thinking of RecapitulationThe only dance I did with my father, a square dance my mother insisted he take me to, and tonight, the sky a dramatic backdrop I don’t remember who first taught me Red sky at night, Sailors’ delight, but the sky is lovely, and Turner-ish which means smokey and glowing, and we are surrounded by an insanity that cannot be borne no matter how brave, a harsh grieving, the sky a pillow we cannot reach our heads low as we circle around and around and around do si do but the air is still gentle and patient and we can sit down for awhile and marvel  Terri McCord is a Pushcart and a Best of the Net nominee. Recent or forthcoming publications include Coastlines Anthology, The Westchester Review, Gargoyle, and Chiron Review. She is a previous recipient of a South Carolina Arts Commission juried fellowship.
Another week comes to a close with an offering of poetry from the international community. Today, SHINE welcomes Changming Yuan. I became acquainted with Changming through Alien Buddha Press, where we are press mates. Changming, who hails from Canada, brings us three poems: En Route; Anagramming Love: A Bilingualcultural Poem; and, a clever little prose poem, Nuanced Nuiscances. Thank you, Changming, for sharing your work with SHINE! En Route 1/ Attachment Detached I thought you’re the home To my little bird as to my Large soul But alas, I find You are just another hotel Along the long way to Dao 2/ Night Vision As the tide surges forward From the heart of the ocean A tiny white flower Is blooming Against all the dark noises Rising high along the coast 3/ Celebration of Sunlight Stop, Seeker, and set yourself In a moment of meditation If you listen to the sunshine With all your inner & outer ears You would hear A serene song of serendipities Anagramming Love: A Bilingualcultural Poem In English, ‘love’ is meaningless if anagrammed But if I add a letter, it will become a magic word Full of possibilities as in the case, say, where I Take off my glove, use a clove or olive to write A novel about how to solve my problem of ‘I’ As a vowel in a hovel in its laevo form; whereas In Chinese, 爱情 [love] can be embarrassing, for If I remove two strokes from the root-character & Add them to my feeling, 爱情would become受精 [Fertilization]; so, I’d avoid saying爱你 [love you] For if two strokes were taken away from the root- Character for 你, it would mean 受伤 [getting hurt] Author's note: This poem was inspired by Helena Qi Hong (祁红） Nuanced Nuisances Things I hate most about my life here: brushing teeth twice every day; happening to see my deformed face in the mirror; cleaning the toilet wall; listening to the endless self-promotional rhetoric before hearing what I expected but fail to get from youbube or tictok; trying to find a program worth my effort to kill time; giving up my whim to know what is happening in the world; deleting junk emails; garbaging the fliers & free newspapers; opening my door to a stranger trying to sell a new god or product; waiting more than one hundred minutes only to speak to a helpless recorded voice over the phone; cooking meat; doing laundry; doing dish washing at least three times a day; bearing the noise made by Ted, my elder son’s eight-year-old dog when he comes to visit me from Seattle; walking or, rather, being walked by, the dog during my stroll with it; making poetry and fiction submissions to various online or print magazines; seeing my wife’s long face; putting up with my younger son’s nasty attitude; seeing his messy room and shoes everywhere; in particular, having to take a dump when getting ready for a meal; standing long in the washroom before managing to pee out anything … alas, my life is really so hateful in this invisible & infinitesimal corner! Now, in this antlike moment, is my life really worth living, Gadfly?  Yuan Changming co-edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan. Writing credits include 16 chapbooks, 12 Pushcart nominations for poetry and 3 for fiction, besides appearances in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), BestNewPoemsOnline and 2129 other publications across 51 countries. A poetry judge for Canada's 44th National Magazine Awards, Yuan began writing and publishing fiction in 2022; his debut novel Detaching, 'silver romance' The Tuner, and short story collection Flashbacks are all available on Amazon.
Today SHINE is honored to cast the spotlight on internationally published poet, Vikki C., with three gorgeous poems: Between Two, Wilderness Gallery, and Lifelines Through the Oldest War. Enjoy! Thank you, Vikki C., for sharing your gift of words with SHINE! Between Two As a last resort, the poets choose love or sorrow. Their faces at the afterparty, like any other face that is beautiful through glass. Pale, like swans on a still lake, moving towards each other. The water hardly flinching. Our whole lives swaddle the lake. The lake cries. We let it tire its lungs. We lie on the banks awash in violet, miming our way through. The lilies filling with rain, until they overflow. My mother emerging from bent willow to walk beside me—her steps steadily replacing yours. Tomorrow, I will take the train back to LA. The carriage windows swathed in milk-light. We’ll pull away from the platform, the train’s silver body segueing into a river. Two swans taking flight. She’ll wave the same way you waved in Grand Central. As if we could move closer. Make a third feeling from history. Drift, necks graceful, and not touch. We could stay up and drink all the wine — and not kiss. Love, sorrow. Why were we apart so long? What fabric is your nightfall? Under lamplight --is my hair the shade of friendship? Wilderness GalleryI want the flaws to be critiqued as the dazzling faultline that made us. You, mountainous, sunblazed, I, an endeavour to stay for one full revolution. Shade shifts my bearings, makes me thirst another aspect, a different slant of rain and tumult on my face, but only from afar. The artist holding up their brush to gauge the relativity of two points already changing in our minds. The lilacs shattering ice even though I’m no believer. Learning the body through blooming does not promise the body fragrance. This blue is not heaven, only its fictive underbelly — and I am consoled I have not died. How do we know it’s done? the art of poppy brightness in our palette, mixed just to prove what a heart holds? You paint my eyes as closed and night falls too soon. The fine line between the ocean and dreaming the ocean in a storm-drowned field. You give me a dusting of gold instead of a tongue, so I won’t argue over language or where the hands might meet. Most impressions fade, the animal’s prints snowed over, so we focus on the flicker in the skull’s cavities. You, wielding your silver instrument ready to pry the decay. In a square of sky too blue, it dazzles, no matter the angle — what I love. And fear. And love again. God, I’d lie so still. Lifelines Through The Oldest War I’d wager, I thought of you first-- as a fist blooming under hard frost, as a habit curled in a mother’s belly or a child, yellowed by joy in a quiet field. You leave and memory sings itself from smaller means—a seed, a fish released. Whatever slightness saves us without burning. We both love loneliness equally-- our problem is not touch, but peace. Like it could happen someday, when we get over the missives and watch the horses grow with the sun. When salt hardens the meadows, I’d trade this life for your fire in the hills --naming things for the first time. Seeing the deer vanish through the mulberry, shaking the snow clean with our troubles. In the other war, we’d lose our titles-- occupy bare skin, warm with survival. Isn’t this what we always do? Surrender, so the others don’t come searching with hard conclusions drawn from their sides? Not even a city worth ransacking, no address worth forgetting, no door left ajar to a small voice. Not even the quartz in the crack-- our last evening pouring out in victory.  Vikki C. is a British-born poet and fiction writer whose work has earned nominations for The Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and the Orison Best Spiritual Literature. Her writing has appeared in over 80 publications across US, Canada, UK and Europe. Recent and forthcoming venues include The Ilanot Review, EcoTheo Review, Grain Magazine, Emerge Literary Journal, The Inflectionist Review, Harpy Hybrid Review, Barren Magazine, Cable Street, Psaltery & Lyre, Sweet Literary, Amethyst Review, New Verse Review, Ballast Journal, Feral, and Ice Floe Press. She is the author of two collections including Where Sands Run Finest (DarkWinter Press, 2024). Vikki was a winner of the Black Bough Poetry 2024 Poetry Collection Contest (UK) and was shortlisted in the DarkWinter 2nd Anniversary Contest, judged by Kim Fahner (Canada). Linktree: linktr.ee/vikki_c._author
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SHINE - International Poetry Series
From the international poetry community, we have a "luxury of stars," as Sylvia Plath might say, and it is my honor to provide a home for their words through SHINE Poetry Series.
NOW IN PRINT!
Stars Over the Dordogne
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