2022 WINTER OLYMPICS

by Lu “Reed ABCs” Wei

Read: "What Uyghur Americans Want You to Know about the Olympic Games" from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

As the wIntér oLympics cLOSE for 2022,

the Covid Bubble popped, and Xi Jinping’s Beijing fling’s through,

the teams returned, some to their lands where real snow oft occurs,

remembering the food and quarantines with heartfelt stirs.

Though typical concerns and controversies happened still,

false starts, missed calls, falls, dope disquals, and jumpsuits on the hills,

the WINter Games participants were “free” and far from strife,

Tibet, HongKong and Xinjiang. There was no loss of life.

Bing Dwen Dwen, frozen in his space clothes, with his constant smile,

embodying ice purity, has waved good-bye in style.

 

Lu “Reed ABCs” Wei is poet of China, an anagrammatic heteronym of Bruce Dale Wise. “Reed ABCs” is his art name (hào).

END OF THE LINE

by Howard Winn

Chinese Communist Party leaders are afraid that the Dalai Lama will not have an afterlife. Worried enough that this week, officials repeatedly warned that he must reincarnate, and on their terms. Tensions over what will happen when the 14th Dalai Lama, who is 79, dies, and particularly over who decides who will succeed him as the most prominent leader in Tibetan Buddhism, have ignited at the annual gathering of China’s legislators in Beijing. . . . Party functionaries were incensed by the exiled Dalai Lama’s recent speculation that he might end his spiritual lineage and not reincarnate. That would confound the Chinese government’s plans to engineer a succession that would produce a putative 15th Dalai Lama who accepts China’s presence and policies in Tibet. --New York Times, March 11, 2015

The train has reached the
station and will be taken
out of further service.
All passengers please
proceed to the platform.
It is reported as possible
that the Dalia Lama may not
choose reincarnation bringing
to a close the ageless reign
of his timeless essence in order
to thwart the Red Capitalists
now milking crony connections
to make the nouveau riche of
the modern China connected
to the high end real estate
of London, Paris, and New York
and who desperately still need
their own dogma for the Tibetan
region the Chinese covet as
also prime real estate where
they can park the excess
Chinese now filling their
historical land and deposit their
young like money laundering
shady deals in the best Ivies
and yet they desire Shangri La
as their very own and this
is what the 14th Dalai Lama
will short circuit if his spirit
says no more and no return
in the new body of some
favored infant for number 15
no matter what the descendants
of Mao wish they can only pretend.

Howard Winn's poetry and fiction has been published recently in Dalhousie Review, Galway Review, Taj Mahal Review, Descant (Canada), Antigonish Review, Southern Humanities Review, Chaffin Review, Evansville Review, and Blueline. He has a B. A. from Vassar College and an M. A. from the Stanford University Writing Program.

HIMALAYA RHAPSODY

by Stefanie Bennett

Tsering Tsomo, speaking on behalf of the Society for Threatened Peoples, highlighted the recent shooting in Kardze, Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (Sichuan Province) as a recent example of the People’s Republic of China being caught in a downward spiral of violence in Tibet. . . . Exercising its right to reply, the PRC accused NGOs of turning a “blind eye” and trying to politicize human rights. --Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy, September 18, 2014

Your tears have a way of working.
The miracles they perform
Are dispatched to the authorities.

You say you mean peace. I say war
Is of more value. You do not intend
To harm me... it's said over and again.

Convince me!

String up those genocides for
All to see. Spit out
The eyes... take mine...

I don't need your need.


Stefanie Bennett has published eighteen books of poetry and 1 novel. Of mixed ancestry [Italian/Irish/Paugussett-Shawnee], she was born in Townsville, North Queensland, Australia, in 1945. Stefanie's latest poetry title 'The Vanishing' is due at year's end from Walleah Press.

DECEMBER ONCE AGAIN

by Diana Woodcock

"Jazz Beat" painting by Debra Hurd

What can I write to shed light
on this dark December night?
A Connecticut town grieves for
twenty-six dead—victims of the latest
school shooting.  Tibetans are setting
themselves on fire for freedom,
ninety-five since February, 2009.
Listening to musicians walking the bass,
feathering the line, I let the blues take me,
wrap me in the Great Mystery.

All are one, meant to sing and sway
together, to love.  The blues is all about
love, longing, loss, listening,
improvising, sharing our stories and
struggles, recognizing each other
as sister and brother.

Look into the faces around you
moved by music—see how they
seem familiar?  What better way
to pray for justice, an end to violence,
than to sway to the swing of jazz?

A Pakistani girl shot in the head
because the Taliban cannot understand
her hunger and yearning for higher
learning; they do not recognize
she is their sister.  Let the blues take me.
shape my prayer for peace, lead me
to transcend nihilism, alienation.

Listening to the blues, to the sounds of
migrant workers in this oil-rich desert town.
Thinking about blood diamonds,
underground railroads, women and girls
sold into the sex trade.

This is Advent season, time
for preparing for the light.
Long dark December nights.
Listen to the blues.  Gaza.  Aleppo.
Keep listening.  The call to prayer
mid-day, the mosque.  Revisionist
Zionist leaders.  Jihad.  Refugees.
Cambodian children amputees
still playing among landmines.

Dear jazz drummer, please
keep feathering the line.


Diana Woodcock’s first full-length collection, Swaying on the Elephant’s Shoulders—nominated for a Kate Tufts Discovery Award—won the 2010 Vernice Quebodeaux International Poetry Prize for Women and was published by Little Red Tree Publishing in 2011.  Her chapbooks are In the Shade of the Sidra Tree (Finishing Line Press), Mandala (Foothills Publishing), and Travels of a Gwai Lo—the title poem of which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  She has been teaching at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar since 2004.  Prior to that, she lived and worked in Tibet, Macau and Thailand.

TIBET IS A COUNTRY

by Judith Partin-Nielsen

Image source: globalpost

BEIJING — Chinese police officials have detained a Tibetan monk and his nephew and accused them of playing a role in a series of self-immolations, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. The move appeared to be part of a campaign to prosecute Tibetans who are accused of aiding others who set fire to themselves in protest of Chinese rule. --Edward Wong, The New York Times, December 10, 2012 



1

young monk’s red
and saffron robes
dissolving into flame
the intersection of
faith, courage and despair

2

Outside the rug shop
Tibetan flag flutters
Mourning the death
of the “land of Snows”


Following a trail of words, mountains, spirit and tears, this writer, mother, wife and eventually psychoanalyst left Texas for Colorado in 1985.  The land of the Arapahoe welcomed me and called me by name.  The love of poetry, poet and high mountain valleys has warmed my heart and made my home.  Freud said “everywhere I go, the poet has gone before me.”  May we keep following those footsteps on our paths thru the worlds.  Judith Partin-Nielsen teaches contemplative psychotherapy at Naropa University, practices psychoanalysis and writes poetry.