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    The Topaz Shadow
    The Topaz Shadow
    The Topaz Shadow
    Ebook162 pages1 hour

    The Topaz Shadow

    By Carrie Chang

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    About this ebook

    Carrie Chang was born in 1970, in Syracuse, New York. She attended Stanford University, UC-Berkeley and New York University, obtaining her B.A., and M.J. and M.F.A. in English and journalism and creative writing, respectively. She worked as an Asian American journalist in the arts/political field for almost a decade, creating her own magazine, “Monolid,” and lives as a writer/poet in the Bay Area. Her favorite pastimes include swimming and painting.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherXlibris US
    Release dateMay 30, 2024
    ISBN9798369420348
    The Topaz Shadow
    Author

    Carrie Chang

    Carrie Chang was born in 1970, in Syracuse, New York. She attended Stanford University, UC-Berkeley and New York University, obtaining her B.A., and M.J. and M.F.A. in English and journalism and creative writing, respectively. She worked as an Asian American journalist in the arts/political field for almost a decade, creating her own magazine, “Monolid,” and lives as a writer/poet in the Bay Area. Her favorite pastimes include swimming and painting.

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      Book preview

      The Topaz Shadow - Carrie Chang

      Copyright © 2024 by Carrie Chang.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

      Rev. date: 04/19/2024

      Xlibris

      844-714-8691

      www.Xlibris.com

      859825

      This book of poems is dedicated

      to Isabelle, Veronica, and Benny

      who stood for justice.

      Contents

      Dangling in the Antechamber

      Chinese Azaleas

      Conversations with the Loveless

      Alienated at a Party

      You Have Nothing

      The Loveless Weeks

      Ode to White Daikon

      The Topaz Charmer

      Play Peddler Games

      Kick Out

      Your Favorite Day

      Drawing in the Palm of my Blue Mind

      The Blue Bracelet

      Gloatingly, Thusly

      Absurd Green Lettuce Fragment

      An Eccentric Girl

      Uniquely Asian

      Bartelby’s Baby

      Sweet Suspension of the Times

      Oh Tender Valentine

      You seem to Know What You’re About

      Zithers I Have Known

      Minority In Her Own Land

      A Centurion Curse

      Don’t Think of Me or In-Between

      Embroidering in the Dark

      Or Distort the Facts

      Your Little Heart Become Elastic

      Fairytale Freaks

      Where Love Begets The Hour

      Scairdy Cats and Allotted Vids

      Don’t Tell the Creep

      The Women Who Sing

      Suspension of the Other, Summer of 2022

      Quite All Right

      Clementine Stammer

      Lollipop Lounge

      Amoeba Girl

      Felix and the Cat Lullaby

      Brats of the New Free Society

      Solitary Sushi Fest

      The Invader Game

      Tho’ Disintegrated

      Dreaming of Miss Piggy, at the White Beach, in Harmony

      Don’t Take Your Morning Pill

      Stay Warm Tonight

      Therapy, anyways

      These Fairytale Songs

      Cathay Redefined

      Reading it Up in the Griselda Cave

      Can’t Escape

      The Topaz Shadow

      Funny Medicine & Good Banter

      Too Sensitive For Your Own Good

      Life’s Red Shoes

      The Game of Filial Piety, etc.

      Fickle in Spring-Time

      China, sure, You Promised That

      The Honesty of Flowers

      Miss Tweedle-Dum Laments

      In Love with the Lone Ranger

      Easy Rider

      See How He Prays

      Taking Refuge In All Things Considered

      To Effect, a Home Body

      Eternal Schtick

      They Were Playing Sinbad

      It’s the body, dummy

      Thunder at Night

      Being Normal

      Alone on a Sunday Morn

      Nostalgia Queens

      Dream of the Flower in the Head

      Confucian Puzzle Inscribed In My Heart

      The Mandarins

      Sundays with Uncle

      Planet Neon

      Double-Dipper

      Marooned in the West Again

      Weirdo-land

      Spinach Goddesses I Know

      Hyacinth Dreams of an Everyday Lover

      Mickey Mouse Moments

      Friendly Saints of the S-Parlor

      Grandma, a Lively Memory

      It’s An Inscrutable Age

      Ninja Days For Free

      Doppelgänger Tribe

      The Saga of Identity

      Astor Days of Plenty

      Nobody Land

      My Heart is Alleluia

      Circus Monday

      Mistress Desire

      The Papa Puzzle

      A Foolish Equation

      Lonely Admonitions of a Flower Bud Believer

      Begonia Station, Owl

      Pelicans Preach

      Modern Travesty

      Stolen Identities, inc.

      Being There

      Geisha Faces at The Emporium

      It’s a Messy Life

      Like a Lazy Leper

      Modernity is Princess

      Paean to a Wonderful Stuffed Pink Piggy

      The Topaz Age

      The Topaz Ghetto

      Just You Wait

      Windblown, like this wonderful world

      Innards, Innards

      If You Think You Can Escape

      The Shanghai Jokes

      Maximum Impulse

      The Common Rip-Tide

      Junkie June

      Life of Real Flavuh and What’s Missing

      My Face Too Square

      A Thing of Sassafras

      If It Fits, It Fits

      New Age Pho

      Everyday-go-Heaven Secrets

      Born Again Elf

      A Room of One’s Own

      Anyways

      Topaz Revolution

      Tuesday, maybe

      Delicious Won Ton Verse

      The Elemental Games

      Poetry is Actually

      Don’t Kow Tow

      Not Complaining

      Right on the Couch, Where You Belong

      One Foot In the Rain

      Egg-head Parnevue

      Dangling in the Antechamber

      Like spiritual graffiti-

      They were both eking out

      A dream—two women in

      their separate clouds,

      Like antechambers where

      Things are loud, the pink

      Germanic wallpaper like

      A scuffle of stripe, crossed

      Out twice, hearkens

      Back this memory

      Chinese Azaleas

      Azaleas flash, as if suppressed

      In an importunate sun, wilder

      Than the wilder words, oft childish

      As The One, greater than the colliding

      Thirst of thistle grate, the grey

      Demimondes now make their hay,

      What is China, now bereft of the Way,

      Loping in the distance, we had our Say,

      Like opine flash-words, they had much

      Dash—some syllables of lightning pardon,

      The flowery evil of a construct day,

      this thing to be, or say a secret duty,

      A woman born with sacred beauty,

      Eastern lamplight double sac,

      Things hearken, and they

      Take you back, loathe to say

      The things that kill, love

      And honor, they haunt

      Me still, the betting day

      Like so much clay,

      Like random fury

      Ran away

      Conversations with the Loveless

      They steep at the corners

      Of your white carnation bedspread, whispering

      With that discontent, and say

      The season’s yesteryear, as to where

      The party went, some abysminthis

      Fern to wake the sense, no

      Worsening to the sad avail, the mother

      Grieved to see you gwai,

      Your loveless, strange

      Dove-tail, white lights,

      Like humming, obstacles,

      Will see you to your sleep,

      The afterlife was dream-works,

      It wasn’t all that deep

      Alienated at a Party

      All this chitter-chatter, mo-yieh, doesn’t matter,

      The drinks methinks stink of the nostalgic years,

      And crowded rooms, do flood the purple mind,

      Learning curves to do the dip now slip

      Into the sunset of my useless heart,

      Whatever I find I pull apart,

      The language of the shadowy gal,

      Now seeps into the left ear,

      And makes me pale, who

      Cares if I succeed, or if

      I fail, lurking in impostor corners,

      We are all about living

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