Shelly Bryant
Contributor Biography
Shelly Bryant divides her year between Shanghai and Singapore, working as a poet, writer, and translator. She is the author of twelve volumes of poetry (Alban Lake and Math Paper Press), a pair of travel guides for the cities of Suzhou and Shanghai (Urbanatomy), a book on classical Chinese gardens (Hong Kong University Press), and a short story collection (Epigram Books). She has translated work from Chinese for Penguin Books, Amazon Crossing, Epigram Publishing, the National Library Board in Singapore, Giramondo Books, HSRC, Rinchen Books, and Maclehose Press and edited poetry anthologies for Alban Lake and Celestial Books. Shelly's poetry has appeared in journals, magazines, and websites around the world, as well as in several art exhibitions. Her translation of Sheng Keyi’s Northern Girls was long-listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize, and her translation of You Jin's In Time, Out of Place was shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize. Shelly received a Distinguished Alumna Award from Oklahoma Christian University of Science and Arts. Her company, Tender Leaves Translation (Singapore), was shortlisted for The Literary Translation Initiative Award by the London Book Fair. You can visit Shelly's website at: shellybryant.com
Prayer and Meditation
indifference an admirable goal
when polar opposites remain
such close cousins—phobia and fetish
sink and swim, left and right
must no religion always mean
we are left without a prayer
Travels Through the Kuiper Belt
comet
in irregular orbit
when seen from its star
and the inner planets
from beyond
its steps ordered
pulled by powers
too vast too distant
too subtle
for earth’s instruments
to take measure
her intellects to grasp
Untitled Sijo
my prayers
the barycenter
between the Centre’s mass and mine
moving me
to run apace
around the warmth of his glory
moving him
his providence
an answer to my pleas
22 June 1633
rings
shine
around
Saturn’s orb
my telescope’s view
exploding the walls of this cell
Saturn, and His Heir
"Saturn and Jupiter combined account for 92% of the entire
planetary mass in the solar system.”
(http://theplanets.org/saturn/)
—for the 1%
of the eight, maybe nine
gathered here
two hoard the bulk of resources
leaving even less than a tithe
from their coffers, to be split
by the remaining congregants
like all greedy giants
and other failed stars
they float, without face
and skinless
naked, gaseous, and overheated
they swirl in their fancy garb
without a single inch
of solid ground on which to stand
while in the hearts of their neighbors
a fire burns
hot and hard
and on those toughened shells
life
occasionally
bursts into being
Horology
sundial
measured, moments
the movements of timepieces
on high; Earth’s flow
around her sun
hourglass
a running stream dammed
time, pooling at the neck
insisting on its trajectory
with each falling grain
clock
walking on its hands
we pace ourselves
its cadence prescribing
the flow of our days
timeline
life’s events marked
birth graduation marriage death
life’s days passed
in the spaces in between
Author's Note:
"22 June 1633" first appeared in 7x20 (Oct 2015).
"Horology" first appeared in Alluvium.
Low Kian Seh
Contributor Biography
Low Kian Seh has a chemical engineering degree but is an artist to a larger degree. He is a chemistry teacher by occupation but has poetry as a preoccupation. For the love of the craft, he makes time to write, despite being a busy civil servant and father of three. His works have been published in SingPoWriMo anthologies, A Luxury We Cannot Afford, A Luxury We Must Afford, Twin Cities, Anima Methodi, Contour, and Seven Hundred Lines. He won first prize in Singapore’s National Poetry Competition 2019. He is better known for his twin cinema poem, "Singaporean Son", that has gone viral, twice.
maybe God is a barista
who brewed a universe from
long black with a big bang
of expresso shots full-bodied;
percolated stars like clustered
bubbles; swirled galaxies out
of milk foam; styled surfaces
of planets as latte art, with
shortbread moons by the side;
scattered asteroid lumps
of sugar, some caramelized to
trailing comets. after all, being
eternally awake is implicit
in omniscience—perhaps life
itself sprouted from primordial
froth of caffeine molecules
the scientific method
ask a question about an observation:
can sound faith transmit through
a vacuum; will the weight
of God’s word change on the moon;
can Mass always be an expected
constant in any circumstance; what value
of density of a prayer for it to float
to heaven? brandish the bible
as research notes, and construct
hypothesis: “If [God does this], then
[my belief] will happen”; ensure
prediction is measurable. faith is independent
variable on which all others depend. life
is the experiment is the fair test
is not an accident—but what is your actual
condition? control is not always available.
real data is messy: all the individual points
in your life are not always connected
by a straight line. there is often no best fit
and regression is never good for relationships,
inclusive of a divine outlier. analysis informs
the theory, theorist, theology, theist;
such findings cannot be contained in the abstract
creation
You dress the night in tapestries of splendor,
pen Your signature across the stars—
the cosmos bear Your hallmark as designer,
down to cells composing who we are
Your trace is whispered gently in the breeze,
a breath of life that stirs the leaves and flowers,
while the storms that thunder presence seize
attention in these raw displays of power
we are fashioned in Your image, glowing
neon signboards of Your craftsmanship;
as walking products, advertisements showing
definitive proof of ownership:
to recognise the fingerprints that brand
on every jar of clay the Potter’s Hand