By Tim Muren

First Place,
The Drs. Paulette and Jay Mehta Award in Creative Writing

---

Again, the cardinal assaults the back
porch window, speeding toward its own
reflection— stops short, hovers,

hesitates. Crazy bird, like to crack
glass, flaps back—maybe slightly
concussed—perches on slippery elm,

eyes my empty mudroom with what
I swear is anger. Come sit at the dining
table, give me a piece of your mind.

You should know this house is
my mother’s; be mad at her; maybe visit
her at Parkview Clinic—follow

me if you like, to the renovated church
to the long, white hall, to the queue
waiting for a cafeteria to open for dinner.

“That’s really good, she recognizes you!” 
some other patron will say. There will be
movement along the perimeter;

there will be seats at round tea tables
under brittle feathers of a stuffed
rooster hanging from fishing line.

You can read the e-mails from her sisters
in California and St. Louis—watch
with her the construction outside—

expansion— a carpenter carrying
sawhorses through drizzle—
We can agree, “I wouldn’t want

to be him right now,” muddy
Levi’s cuffs under steel-toe heels, 
yellow slicker’s hood over hardhat

as a backhoe operator pulls one
more stump from what is left
of 12th street woods. Trembling

witch-hair roots, crumbling
red-gray clay. Help me
decipher as my mother muses,

hums, yawns, raises her left
hand, shrugs. Laugh, as she laughs,
when she wants to say something.

She always does this. It seems
important. “See. Tee. Like. Bike…” 
She growls, gnashes her teeth because

I do not know. Help me understand.
And once she nods and waves us
away, follow me back here again

and watch as I write this down—
in a poem no less—reach with me
for an epiphany, a translation of desire,

anger, fear— how would it manifest if
it came? As fear outdistancing fatigue?
As faith outdistancing fear?

As lucky combinations of hope and despair
hurtling out of nowhere into nothing,

As a bird attacking the back
window, as the construction workers

outside the clinic, as the distance
between, as a carpenter in clumsy

thermal gloves, walking toward unearthed
hickory trunks, carrying a green

thermos, carrying blueprints.
Sensible as anything,

comprehensible as any instructions
he ever spread out over

plywood and smoothed
over the backs of horses.

Tim Muren has worked at UAMS for almost 25 years, and for the last six years he has been head of the writing center that is part of the Student Success Center. Tim’s previous publications include poetry in Prairie Schooner, Cortland Review, and Antigonish Review.

By Sara Shalin, M.D., Ph.D.

Third Place,
The Drs. Paulette and Jay Mehta Award in Creative Writing

---

Dishes are done and there is quiet.

Trading my phone for stillness, I

Pour half a glass of red in an old jam jar.

The wine runs down the side of the bottle; I

Draw my finger up its neck

And then suck as one does a bleeding paper cut.

Sitting and sipping, I

Notice the paint chipping- here

On the cabinet where the water from the sink is dripping; I

Smile (ruefully) at the stained countertop,

A result of recent riotous food coloring use. I

Recall the smell of that buttercream,

That taste of abundance

And then remember I forgot to eat lunch today. I

Can hear the hum of the dishwasher

And maybe a faint laugh down the hall?

Yes.

Here.

Now.

I am here now. I

Exhale the weight of another pandemic day passed

Then breathe in gratitude for this

Absolutely ordinary miracle

This holy moment of wholeness here, now.

There is quiet and dishes are done.

Sarah Shalin, M.D., Ph.D., is the chair of the Department of Dermatology at UAMS.

Click to read this poem.

Mason Rostollan is a second-year medical student and the president of the Interest Group for Neurodiversity at UAMS.

(Translated from 退休後的晨昏) 

By Tom Chung 鍾倫納

1. 退而難休 Morning After Retirement

夢舊扣漣紋, [pronunciation: mèng jiù kòu lián wén, ] 
Unlike ripples fading away,
  old dreams can’t be kept at bay.

錶輕巳幾斤. [ biǎo qīng yì jǐ jīn. ]
The watch now weighs lighter by pounds¹,

雞鳴鐘不鬧, [ Jī míng zhōng bù nào, ]
No longer before the rooster, the alarm sounds.

何處獻辛勤. [ hé chù xiàn xīn qín. ] 
No one knows where he is needed,
  nor when again he will be greeted.

2. 現代天倫敘 Grand-Mom’s Dinner Nowadays

明窗伴靜几, [míng chuāng bàn jìng jǐ ] 
Windows are bright, furniture is clean; ²

舐犢待晨曦. ³ [ shì dú dài chén xī ]
Dishes are plenty, soup is lean. ⁴

久盼同餐飯, [ jiǔ pàn tóng cān fàn, ]
It’s been quite a while having dinner together,

羹殘燕巳飛. ⁵ [gēng cán yán sì fēi. ]
Every child is gone, while the meal is barely over.

Notes

^1. Inspired by Dali’s melting watch.

² Everything was cleaned up the day before.

³ The translation uses a different metaphor to convey the anxious feeling of the grandmother who could not sleep while waiting to see the children. The original version contains a Chinese metaphor — “The cow woke up early, waiting to lick the calf, well before dawn.”

⁴ Serving lean instead of fatty soup is a healthy lifestyle promoted in the culture of traditional Chinese medicine, whether the soup contains meat or not.

⁵ Every swallow has flown away. The swallow in many Chinese poems is a symbol of birds leaving the nest upon growing up.

For Readers Who Are Curious About the Uniqueness of Classical Chinese Poems

These two poems follow a rigid style of the most popular format of Classical Chinese poems. There are four lines in each poem, five characters per line. Another major format is seven characters per line.

There is only one syllable for each Chinese character. One or more character/s (mostly two or a few) constitutes/constitute a word. The square shape of the characters, the fixed number of characters in each line, and the fixed number of lines (mostly four and eight) forms obvious visual rhythms.

The written version of the English translation obviously takes lots more words than the Chinese version.

Verbal presentation of a Classical Chinese poem takes a shorter span of time than poems in other languages.

Recitation of each 20-character poem takes about a third of the syllables and time than the English translation.

The Classical Style also requires that the pronunciation of each character share a certain tone, depending on the location of the character in each line. Moreover, the last character in each line must belong to a certain rhyme group. Such tone-and-rhyme-audio-patterns form very harmonic rhythms. You may try to read aloud the five syllables in English that following each line in Chinese to get an impression of reciting a Chinese poem.

While most Chinese writers think it is hard to follow such rigid requirements, they find the 4 x 5, 4 x 7, 8 x 5, and 8 x 7 audio-visual formats easy to remember, and helpful to condense/discipline their expression. Whether written with a rigid audio style or not, if the content is articulate, the expression is attractive or amusing, such poems would be widely accepted. Even illiterate people can memorize and recite some.

Among thousands of poems still popular today (many were written over a thousand years ago), most follow the rigid style because the rhythm, the rhymes and the order of the tones resonate well and are easy to remember.

Tom Chung, Ph.D., M.Phil., B.S.Sc., is a professor in the Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health.

Tom has also maintained a life-long passion in the study of Chinese history, culture, and poetry.  He is one of a few writers who has published in five Chinese societies and diasporas, despite their political differences.

By Chris Fettes

There are poems I intend to write
That land on the purgatorial backburner
Never to be revisited
Because the poem was conceived
In a distinct and fleeting moment, and
The moment passed, its magic
Became but a distant glimmer:
The mother who chose
Not to spank her young son
In the doctor’s waiting room
When he broke her rules,
But instead calmed him
And said she would not hurt him
Then asked if he understood what he did wrong,
In the protection of being told
He would not be punished.
I was in awe of the moment,
The moment was the poem
And I did not capture it
In the crystalline clarity
With which the interaction occurred,
But I thought of it again and again.
Here lies an observation, rudely captured,
After the moment lost its shine
In the recesses of my memory
And a long neglected note to self
To write, to write, to write.

Chris Fettes, M.A., is an Instructor and Program Coordinator in the Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health.