Welcome readers!
We’re happy to introduce Ann Huang, our selection for June’s Poetry at Ephemera. Thanks to Ann and everyone who submitted! If you’d like to participate, we will be fielding submissions each month to publish one poem per issue from the same poet for the month. Each poet receives a $200 honorarium. For full rules and more info please see our designated post about Poetry at Ephemera. You can also submit via the button:
Introducing, Ann Huang!
Writer Bio
Ann Huang is a multicultural and multilingual Chinese American poet, film maker and visual artist based in Newport Beach, CA. Her award-winning poetry has been featured in Denver Quarterly, Ruth Stone, Adelaide Lit Mag, Rue Scribe, The Blue Mountain Review, The Elevation Review, Helen Lit Mag, The Florida Review, The Bare Life Review, The Bookends Review, Tiny Seed Journal, The Write Launch and Verse Wrights. She is producing a limited short film series Ann Huang Presents. Huang is the Visual Arts Editor for the New Found Org and Traveling Show Manager for the Marin Poetry Center. Huang also sits on the advisory board at The University of California Riverside Women in Leadership program. Find her work at AnnHuangPoetry.com and SaffronSplash.com.
Artist Statement
I am a multicultural and multilingual poet, author, literary translator, visual artist, and filmmaker. My living and working experiences have given me diverse perspectives on world affairs. And through my interiority, my introspection strengthened after retrospection. I am univocal about current social geopolitical issues that have to deal with empathy and renewing possibilities. I embrace the opportunities as they come and become critical about things that could harm our humanity at large.
To me, the process of writing and film making is similar to alchemy. The transformation from poetry to film is the melting pot of words, chosen visually and acoustically from human psyche, psychology, myths, and dreams. Each of the sources I draw from hint at loss, pain, joy and desire. The emotional core I feel under the surface of the page and on-screen spark surprising sentiments of mingling dreams and reality. My poems and poetry films are intended to be consumed with introspection. When my audiences navigate their memories with detailed attention to their feelings, they explore the complex emotions of my work with fluidity and then retrospection.
Poems
Each issue of Ephemera spanning the month of June will feature one poem from Ann Huang. After each issue drops, the poem from that issue will then appear here as well. This post will remain on our Substack, free to view, for the year.
Poem 1 of 4
Meteor
At present momentI sit somewhat weary under the moon,
Somewhat weary under the cold lonesome minute—
That harsh ways of the ocean bed
Strolled by; a hummingbird perched by my toes
Believing them for a petal.I always bathed in your light,
So wonderful it was, so wide—
When the cold water brushed in your shape like whisky,
The water that had melted through,
And I woke up—shaken by you.
Poem 2 of 4
Frogs
When does the moon start and the stars shy away?
You soak in red for which there is one world.
One parachute, frog-figured, stroll along the wide
Apex of forest.There is this color of trees, sun bliss and me,
And more emotion.
More so the remaining inflictions that run and flow,
Unveiling the same parachute that flies over, …Full Version Available in June.2 Issue
Poem 3 of 4
La FavoritaFor the ample peoplehood who my mother went
Her body, fascinated by their spirits, margarita & mariachi.
World apart, and always beheld, her breadth would stop;
Her soul would chase after those folkloric lyrics.
She would want to go back to their chaos,
And the wise Chinese sayings beat her free,
She might always long for the half bondage
Whereas from their family memes she breaks her heart.
Something in her is beloved, eternally beloved,
Some quintessential thing has come from her heart,
And she might walk her way of life an expat
Beyond the descents of forest, oceans apart;
For she was born, nearby an oak tree of The Forbidden City,
Under no man’s menace, besides its time.
Poem 4 of 4
Untitled
A mountain dreams
of its companion poem,
full of the finches,
full of tenochtitlan.A poem with tears,
a cotton rope around the body,
intrepid and warm
…. (Full Poem in the June.4 Issue)