Logo, MacQueen's Quinterly
Listed at Duotrope
MacQueen’s Quinterly: Knock-your-socks-off Art and Literature
Issue 12: March 2022
Cherita Sequence: 152 words
By Cindy Bousquet Harris

Dragon’s Eye

(Saigon, 1975)

 
I want to memorize your face, 

let it sink 
into my body 
like rain seeps into earth. 

Your roots cannot survive this soil; 
how can I explain? 


	~ 


The heart that used to pump my blood 
goes with you—
please accept so small a gift. 

How will the longan tree bear fruit? 

Sweet food has lost its taste, 
monsoon mocks my weeping. 


	~ 


Rice fields keep me busy, 
my hands find much to do. 

Lemongrass and fish sauce 

have found some flavor; 
memory lights a candle 
where my heart was. 


	~ 


Behind the leaves of dragon’s eye, 
sometimes I think I see...

In mangoes as they ripen, 
in clouds that form and disappear, 
in a corner, by the candle: 

my questions: 


	~ 


Is that soil good for you? 

Your roots 
grown deep, your branches green 
and filled with laughing? 

Do you hear the leafbird’s many calls, 
know that I have not forgotten? 

 

Cindy Bousquet Harris
Issue 12, March 2022

is a poet, a licensed marriage and family therapist, and the editor of Spirit Fire Review. Her poetry is found in Nostos, Unlost Journal, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Clamor 2021, Black Bough’s Christmas & Winter Edition, and in several anthologies. Cindy lives in Southern California with her husband and their children.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

Gunnysack, cherita sequence by Cindy Bousquet Harris, a semi-finalist in MacQ’s Magician Ekphrastic Writing Challenge (Issue 3, May 2020)

 
 
Copyright © 2019-2024 by MacQueen’s Quinterly and by those whose works appear here.
Logo and website designed and built by Clare MacQueen; copyrighted © 2019-2024.
⚡   Please report broken links to: MacQuinterly [at] gmail [dot] com   ⚡

At MacQ, we take your privacy seriously. We do not collect, sell, rent, or exchange your name and email address, or any other information about you, to third parties for marketing purposes. When you contact us, we will use your name and email address only in order to respond to your questions, comments, etc.