Raphael

There was once a small bunnie in Perth
Who was born on the day of his birth
And he made us so well
He was called Raphael
For he met us to mete out our Derth

The Tree

My mother draws me with the Currier Tree, that will die this summer.

O brave new world that has such people in’it! – Miranda
‘Tis new to thee – Prospero

Song of Song of Song

for the director of Music. A Psalm of Judith. Music by Ebone Ingram, Lyrics by Judith Huang. Sung by Ebone Ingram.

I will praise you with so many hands that grow
they will form the tree, the tree of life!
I will praise you with so many songs I know
they will form the hymn of starry lights!
I will praise you with so many thoughts that snow
they will form the mountains of my life!

O my heart is singing singing singing!
Can you tell my heart is singing singing?
O my heart is winging winging winging!
Can you tell my heart is taking winging? –

O my LORD you are the beauteous mountain
O my LORD I am the mustard seed
How I even know to move a mountain
Is knowledge that I will never need

O my LORD you are a king, a sheep
O my LORD by my dear side you bleat
O my LORD I can be yours again
O my LORD if only you would keep!

O my LOVE you are the psalmister
O my LOVE you are the director
O my LOVE you are my conductor
O my LOVE selah! selah! selah!

O my LIFE you are the last act then
O my LIFE you may be the last man
In my whole life who matters any more
For you have taken what no other can

And you have taken for yourself the seed
And you have turned it to a raining tree
And you have taken for yourself the tune
And you have turned it into symphony –

Angels, hear my song oh hear my song!
Angels, you will join in now along!
Angels, will you come with me and join
the everlasting reaching line –

O my Christ! My dreadful chevalier –
Will you come and dwell within me here –
O my Ghost! My floating messenger –
Will you come and whisper in my ear –
O Father! O my faceless deathless father –
Will you come and comfort this your daughter –
Will you hold her, kiss her, dance now with her –
Give her away now, give and give her –
For kingdom glory honor you’ve bestowed her –
Which she must pass along or it destroys her –

It is too much weight, this lightened dust
It is too much joy, this heart has burst
It is too much gifting, ah my dear
I have come to sit still standing here
Bring me down, alight me gently now –
Let me drink with grace the melting snow –

Let me drink with grace the melting snow.

Click here to hear

the gardener

by Judith Huang

nothing comes from nothing – King Lear, to Cordelia
nothing comes from nothing – Maria, the Sound of Music

and o in the darkness
i walked out
in fear but love
threw out my fear
for though you died i wanted to
make love to those
your watery wounds
o how i longed to tend and balm
the horrors that
had pierced your palm –
and i brought all my sweet perfume
and i brought my gentle breathless hair
and i thought all the lovely things
about you that i could drag out
of the deep hollow
of my soul
for knowledge was the grief i knew
and o, and o, i did not know
what to say to that big O
the gaping hole in that great rock
and grief swallowed me like a hole
o it consumed me it consumed me
i was left with only
O

O
there was this man standing there
he wiped my tears, he touched my hair
“Maria”
he said, and I saw
Adam waking up to Eve –
“Maria, Maria”
don’t weep for me – O,
weep for the whole world for me –
for how else does your garden grow?
“Maria, Maria!”
don’t weep for me
don’t cling to me
don’t cleave to me – O,
“Maria! Maria!”
the world cries out
for your great love
my little dove – O
“MARIA, MARIA!”
and I did go –
He took my name
and now He and I
and all the world –
are All the Same.

leaving eden

by Judith Huang

because when you held my hand
it was by the wrist,
so i could never let you go –
and so,
we would walk on,
together forever,
a man, a woman,
and my poor arm
the snake,
dripping venom
into the sand
for every step we take –

(2003)

Wings

by Judith Huang

for my Mama, read to Lori Goetz

wings
even in the ultrasound,
I saw the wings.
thin blurry things
in the code of windscreen wipers,
already curled up in the dazzling rain.

she loved a blue silk nightgown,
uncut but for the neck and her bare arms,
flitting in her run.

I had a pet duckling,
who tilted his little head up at the sky.
the day he flew away, I cried.

My Mother’s Chicken Rice Recipe

An Iowan Incarnation

ingredients

1 plump chook, about 1.2-1.5 kg (cooking time will have to increase if any bigger) -washed and cleaned with tail removed.

2-3 slices ginger,\

1 garlic (the entire thing) finely minced

spring onion – 1-2 pieces for the chicken, and the rest finely sliced for the ginger & spring onion sauce

steps:

1) Place ginger spring onion and garlic pieces together with the neck of the chicken at the bottom of a large pot, and the chicken on top of them, with the breast facing up.

2) Pour in a kettle of boiling water, with enough water to cover at least 2/3 of the chicken. Add 1 teaspoon of salt.

3) Boil on high heat and cover ( leave a small gap so it will not boil over)

4) When it is boiling nicely, lower heat to medium high(not too low) and boil for 25-30 mins. Longer if chicken is larger.

5) Prepare a basin of cold water in the sink.

6) When time is up, check chicken is cooked properly by turning it upside down (with breast facing down) and leave it in the water for 2=3 mins.) I think this is important if you are cooking for westerners as they do not like bloody chicken.

7) Lift the chicken out of the pot and dunk it in the cold water, fully immersed. Leave it there for 5 mins then lift it up onto a plate.

8) Drizzle the chicken with Shaoxing wine ( or cooking sherry or white wine) and sesame oil.

Rice:

1) While chicken is cooking, wash Jasmine long grain rice. Estimate 1.2 cup for every person, Plus 2 cups extra (people tend to eat more of the rice).

2) Drain the rice.

3) Dice i whole garlic into a fine mince.

4) Heat about 2-3 tablespoons of oil in a wok and add the minced garlic. Fry till fragrant then add the rice.

5) Stir fry tossing conitnually till rice is partially cooked. You can tell when the rice grains start to “stand up”.

6) Set aside in the rice cooker.

7) Add in some pandan leaves tied in a knot if available.

8) When chicken stock is ready, add to rice (amount is roughly 2 ladles to 1 cup rice, or if using rice cooker just follow the guide according to the number of cups of rice used)

9) cook rice.

Condiments:

1) Chilli: pound fresh chilli (remove seeds if cannot take hot), or put in a blender.

2) Add Apple cider vinegar (or white vinegar), pinch of salt.

3) Ginger & Spring onion sauce:

4) 1 knob ginger grated finely

5) 1 bunch spring onion sliced very thinly

6) Mix together and add olive oil and sesame oil and 1 teasp salt.

7) Dark thick black soya sauce. add 1-2 pieces finely julienned spring onion (the white part) and sesame oil.

8) Chop up ckicken into bite sized pieces and drizzle with more sesame oil and bit of wine. garnish with spring onion &/or fresh coriander.

9) Serve with slices of cucumber and tomato and celery or lettuce.

Bon appetit!

Note: you cannot cook this dish without sesame oil and spring onion cos these cannot be subsituted.

Hiroshima

John Hersey’s Hiroshima begins:

“At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just sat down at her place in the plant office and was turning her head to speak to the girl at the next desk.”

(from the Writer’s Alumnac)

2004:

The Apocalypse Museum

We unearthed the Earth and found a dead museum,
stonestruck, the dead, as though catastrophe
had wiped them out, had claimed the hollow heads,
the bleeding eyes, now dried, paleoanthropic.
Some mated, hands to hearts and eye to eye,
eyes gazing up into the gravel sky.
Small units sat and stacked themselves in flats
around a table lost, without their necks.
Neck to neck the screaming shuttles came
the flaming wonder fossiled on their face.
In granite corridors we found the poor
their lashes bit with frost. Soldiers swaddled
in warm uniforms. They paved the floor.

They had, it seems, first invented metal
They wear it round their heads and round their arms
in shapes, and some embed it in their hearts.

In the museum we found the empty art.
The pillars held the posts of massacre.
Dust preserved the ancient manuscripts
and marble, a mausoleum for the heart.

Anne Abdominable Abdonimnation

for Annne Lizbette Goetze

Didn’t help your spelling any. There is no u in color – G. A. T.

It would be an affront to thee Americae

to bee spelleng Webster as Webstre

but tis muchen cuter whenne centre’s offer-kilter!

Or o pardon! Should I have said Kiltre?

Indeedy O I’d take a litre

o’pretentiousness o’er rationalitre!

I’m gonna have work on the metre

of this or it’ll tak a whole literatre

to makke it through glomes of the weathre

For there is no One English Leeteratre –

just ask Will Shaxberd or Will Shaxsphre

for tis conventionale to sae

dat if there’s a Will there’s a Waye!

For Englishes full of the fae rae –

four a languwuich is merely a dialect –

with an armae, or so said Max Weinreich

Who dint make that up but did coin-iech

and don’t the ol’ Germans dey knowet?

After awl they are beeter at amaglamet!

Whot with Weltanschauung and Bismarkian raelpolitik

which I you must agree, Miz Goetz, doth hath aringtoit

that doth ringeth true, and we’llgoetztoit

in the welt of the OldEvereCountrae

which you do go overtosoeversosoonae!

O agreewit’me Englirsh’s Germanic

an’dat ’tis better to makeit as wegoettoit

and hopefully itwillresonate

like the birth of the patois of worldliterate

or weltliteraturatre which we have inaugurat

With dis poesie which we do dedicat

to me Critiquel ze Ladie O Annie

who doth sail and doth sale to d’OldeCountre

dat doth lie on the othreside o’d’Atlantic

O do not o do not have a weltfit

wen u do and discovre the countrie

hath chang’ed since u hath imaginedit

but embrace o embr-aece o embraecen eet!

O too bee o notte to be dat iz zee queztion!

But pleze do notte take eet too badlae

Fore you art ze pinnacle o’zee’passione

O thou art faerfullae an’ wunderfullae maide

In ze Imagen o’ Dei’O’ de Deitee

O so goz forth an’ dooz o and Goet bee – !

-Hudit Guanh
on Skypae to zee Californicae

Click to hear the first Recitation

Click here to hear the second Recitation

The Writer’s Alumnac

This is the first time I’ve heard it