. . . learn to listen as things speak for themselves.
                           -Bashō-

They’ve always known how to be alone, common,
Anonymous and ordinary in number as the cricket,
Except for silence, redundant as blackboard clunch,
But even more than this, though underfoot, beaming
Perennially face-up, starship voyagers eyeing the heavens,
Whatever weather, donning the same cloche and pillbox
Saffron hats season after season, never la nue, but never
Outré ou gauche either, as might be expected, never even
Rococo, downright out-of-the-loop, ever wishing  they were                                                                   Dressed to kill like toffs and swells, and almost never,
Confides the poet in Edo, in perfectly erudite Mandarin,
At fall twilight, echoing a solitary cicada’s cry,
Unless you listen, listen, “sinking/into stone.”
—

FROM FALLING will be published between March-April 2016; EVERYTHING SPEAKING CHINESE and OPEN HOUSE (fictions) were published in 2015. Gordon divides his personal and professional lives among Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Desert/Mountain Southwest.