 OPEN HOUSE (fictions) and an expanded edition of the prize-winning SunStone Poetry Press chapbook, EVERYTHING SPEAKING CHINESE: ENHANCED, REVISED EDITION, were published in 2015, while GROUND OF THIS BLUE EARTH and UNDER ARIES were published in 2012 and 2014, respectively. Gordon's awards include National Endowment for the Arts & Humanities Fellowships and writing residencies, while several poems have been nominated for Pushcarts. NIGHT COMPANY was nominated for an NEA Western States' Book Awards. He divides personal and professional lives among Asia, Europe, and the Mountain/Desert Southwest. What is Light After All but Desire?
Better to illuminate than merely to shine . . . -Aquinas- Beyond the complex, a parti-colored suite of prayer-flag kerchiefs hitched on hemp And cord stretched across the patch of thin-skinned, filéd, silver poplars adorning Night, People, Pueblo, Llano decked out in desert ecru, ochre, divining light. And then they ignite So soon as spiritlamps, spots of unknowable light rarely seen, or first-felt in the blood, Until late, blue, then red and violet sparking inside and out chambered houses of the poor Like winter-white luminaria, now midsummer-mad, adobe, stucco, terrones marsh-brick Glowing, while the flat pale sky requites its dark desire over clumps of mountains splayed in Silhouette, white night caught in the desertspell of wild iris, jasmine and lilac, Chaste berry shrub, Sexpot Tease Cereus, her solitary solstice taking nightwhite root, blooming oh so virginal! For once, and once only, out of cactus in fragrant darkness, then poof— gone with the dawn, Light after all but desire inspiriting dreamy clay. Spring-Moon Lotuses on a Summer’s Evening (after Yung Shou-p’ing) What if they’re not as sublime as baroque Blue Nile lotus, Crème-white Madonna lily, ascending aflash from sacred waters, Stems stiff as righteous Jamaican spliffs, têtes regally coiffured, But just gangly and beige and somewhat scumbled, brushed on Mulberry bark or rice paper, their taupe, misty palette Home, Opening nightly up from rushes and shallows for no one but Themselves, Art, Nature, Poetry, and the unseen Spring-Moon Illuminating mist just enough for feel, just as it illumines every Mortal thing in this world, however briefly, fabled glam aesthetes Sporting toque-blanche-et-azure crowns, milkweed and toadstool—, Sunflowers caught furiously yellow on canvas in the act of being Nothing more beautiful than they already were, are, always have been, In bleak, wintry Arles.
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