Poets wanted for the H.A.L. 2010 Poetry Slam

H.A.L. is looking for performance-based poets to compete in a poetry slam. If you think you got the chops to get up and stage and rock the mic like a vandal contact Butler at greatwhitebuddha@gmail.com , or at editor@haliterature.com

Please send 3 short battle ready poems to the point, to the point no faking, with a brief bio including your name and contact info following the selected poems. Each poem should be a 150 words or less. If you got the mad skills an interview will be arranged to showcase a few pieces for us and if you are indeed a manically nefarious master of the spoken word you will be chosen to compete against other wordsmiths in a no holds barred battle of the bards!

lost in the pr

by S.C.Gordon

I’ve been missing for thirteen years.

I don’t like the word ‘missing’ because it implies a sense of continuity which defeats the object of my going.

At first all I wanted to be was dead, and it was only the grey haze of confusion that clumsied my fingers and stopped them from tying a noose.

Some people think I killed myself. They come up with all sorts of reasons why. Interestingly, none of them have been anywhere near to the true reason if I’d decided to do it. It would have been easy, it really would. But I didn’t have the wherewithal to do it. Suicide requires a certain heroism,  a surety that nothing will be as great as what’d already been – an arrogance that anyone will really care.

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dialogues between two humans

(as opposed to the opposite)

by ling’ling

number one:

Metro line 2. 人民广场. Crowded platform. Waiting for the subway.

An old man in a bright blue Mao suit jacket approaches in grey pants. His features are not rugged. He cannot be a migrant worker, but he’s definitely from the countryside. Perhaps a retired school teacher with a son who made it in 上海. He’s carrying red plastic bags with ingredients for the evening’s meal. He approaches me and brushes my forearm with the back of his hand.

he. 诶。我要到世纪大道。在哪里上？
me. 好像。。。等一下我看吧 (looking at the map above the gate)。。。您那边上吧。
he. 嗯。

I’m looking at his face and I can’t see anything to indicate he realizes who (what) he’s talking to. He gets on the metro and disappears. I can see Chinese around me as confused as I am.

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Hitotoki – Shanghai Zhongxue Guojibu

by Ryan Carter

June 12-13, 2010

I’d like to say it was a test of their ability to deal with genderbending, premeditated, but really no such plan came to my head. I was looking at Renata’s nails lacquered green and needed something to break up the monotony of a seven-day week, mostly for them, because into this week we also had to cram nearly everything. Angel Liu had drifted to the front row and I asked her, for me, casually, “what color nail polish would you have?”  She looked down hard for a minute and then she defiantly as she always does- for here is a woman with a backbone through which you cannot pass your hand, and maybe the only one in her class-” dark pink”, she says. Tomorrow I’ll paint them for you, she says. Continue reading…

Hidden Treasure

by Lincoln Daw

Ok, ok here we go, he’ll love this one! Adjust the microphone. Do you get it? We haven’t got around to hooking up a webcam but the blank screen I’m staring into is indicative of his reaction. How to proceed? I feel as if I’ve stubbed my toe at the beginning of a long corridor, we hobble to hang up.

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Old Yang’s Noodle Shop

by Justin Corbitt

It didn’t look like the ashes came from an urn.

I mean, then again, it’s hard to say if that is completely accurate.  I’ve never seen ashes from an urn.  In fact, I don’t think I have ever know anyone to be cremated, or seen the cremation process, or seen the end result.  In short, I can only imagine the remains of someone, who chose to be set on fire once they expired, as a super fine white-gray ash.  More like the sand on a beach at some far off exotic locale than say the end of a burnt up cigarette.

The earthly remains of Mr. Yang’s Noodle Shop did not fit the bill at all.  The charred mass of a skeleton gave no indication of peace.  Dirt and mud mixed and coated the collapsed structure, whilst a cloud of ash and dust hung in the air and settled in little swirling pools.  Burnt, blackened wood debris, still smoldering and sticking out amongst the rebar and shattered glass, gave the ghastly appearance of a broken, misshapen spinal cord, as if the small building had broken its back when it tried to roll around on the ground and put itself out. Continue reading…

Featured H.A.L. Artist Xiong Wenyun

About H.A.L. Featured Artist Xiong Wenyun

Born in 1953 in Congqing, Sichuan Province, Xiong Wenyu is a contemporary multidisciplinary artist currently living and working in Beijing. After teaching for several years in Japan, Xiong returned to China where she spent three years in the late 1990s working on her multimedia project, “Ten Years of Moving Rainbow,” on the Sichuan-Tibetan highway. The terrain and climate of the area proved challenging, with frequent earthquakes, mudslides, and other natural disasters. But the Tibetan people, Xiong notes, live a very unique life, providing her with bountiful inspiration. The colorful clothing and Buddhist prayer flags enabled her to apply her keen sense of color. She relies on these symbols to approach the conflict between modern civilization and ancient traditions, examining the intersection of man and nature, and the attempt of harmonious living.

For more information, or to purchase some of Xiong’s work, please visit http://www.StudioDoorChina.com/, or http://www.ArtSpeakChina.org/.

The Bund/Guangdong lu – 28th of December, 2008

by B.

Picking up my coat and scarf from the bar chair and collecting my Zhongnanhai 8’s, I down the last lonely Glamour Bar mojito for the evening, and to the muffled beat of what I think could only be Soulwax, I take the elevator down to the ground floor. The lobby’s divided staircase in plated gold lead takes me to the street, and dodging the Anhuinese beggar woman by the taxi stand, I turn left on to Guangdong Lu, and without really thinking I walk the 30 meters or so to where the Bund once used to be. The December cold is biting this year, and I pull my scarf tighter, reminding myself for the millionth time to buy a pair of proper gloves. Shanghai isn’t Northern Scandinavia, but I can’t remember ever the minus 20 degrees at home feeling as cold as these supposedly modest plus 3.

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The Year

by Dena Rash Guzman

And we met in the dark, on the bar patio. The stars barely flitted through the smog so that no stellar light reflected in your eyes, only the red end of your cigarette, which you held the wrong way like some naughty little SS agent. I didn’t like your nose and your purse didn’t go with your coat. This is how the lonely start fighting: I knew you’d never be good enough for me. I’d rather have been at home in my slightly shitty underwear unable to find porn wrong enough to get me off, frustrating myself like a cold and ruthless spouse. This is what I think of you and this what I’ve thought from the moment we met, and yet I asked you some stupid question to get you to talk to me. Continue reading…

Hitotoki-Hankou and Jiangxi Rds, today

by hellowatch

I saw a dead guy today. He was in his early forties, dressed in the collared blues of a workman’s uniform. He was lying on the pavement at the base of an office building. I stopped to watch him from behind the fence. His legs and arms were bent and contorted in such an odd position that to see them, one just had to stop. If you can imagine: his left elbow and right knee were pointed directly upward, as was the limp hand of his right arm, on which his head had fallen, and his left knee was bent and flat on the ground. It looked like he might be a swimsuit model adjusting her pose for a steamy photo shoot. That is, if you block what you’re really seeing and feeling out and keep your shallow wits about you. Continue reading…