UPLI Secretary/Treasurer/Editor/ webmaster/Membership Chair
Poets of the Vineyard Chapter of California Federation of Chaparral Poets President
California Federation of Chaparral Poets Twice past president
Artists Embassy International 3rd Vice President/editor/webmaster
Annual Dancing Poetry Contest Contest Chair
Redwood Empire Chinese Association Secretary and School Administrator
Retired teacher of special education and English, Reading and Social Studies
www.dancingpoetry.com
www.recacenter.org
www.ChaparralPoets.org
Ms. Judy Hardin Cheung was born, and currently lives, in Santa Rosa, CA, USA. She has a B.A. in History and English and an M.A. in Education: Curriculum Development and Evaluation. Her teaching credentials include Life Secondary English, History, Social Studies; Life Special Education, Educationally Handicapped, Learning Handicapped, Severely Handicapped. While still active in the field of education, she also held an administration credential. She taught for 4 ½ years at Wayne Aspinall Junior High in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands, then 30 years at Sonoma State Developmental Center, Eldridge,CA.
Ms. Judy Cheung has belonged, to many poetry organizations, with currently active leadership in the above listed groups. She has published many chapbooks, all of which are now out of print. She has won many poetry prizes, been published in many anthologies and has been listed in many Who’s Who listings over the past seventeen years. Since 2003, Ms. Judy also has been presenting framed photographs in art shows, museums and various venues around the San Francisco Bay Area. Many of these artistic photos were taken while attending World Congress of Poets around the world.
Each year since 2000, Judy has put on the Multi-Cultural Poetry Reading and Poet Luck Lunch jointly with the Poets of the Vineyard, Artists Embassy International, Redwood Empire Chinese Association and Alameda Island Poets. For this event, poets from around the greater San Francisco Bay Area gather to meet poets of different languages and cultures. The unique activity is the Pick-A-Partner Read-around. For this, bilingual poetry books are provided. Bringing your own bilingual poetry is also encouraged. Poets are encouraged to choose a poem, and then choose a partner to read in a different language. After the Pick-A-Partner readings, all poets read their own, or any chosen poem in whatever language they choose. Our universal language is English. Our secondary language is Mandarin. We also have had readings in Cantonese, Viet Namese, Tagalog, Pampangan, Korean, Spanish, German, French, Greek, Italian, and perhaps a few that I am forgetting.
Creating Tomorrow
Writing on black gessoed canvas, the poet paints the way to light.
The world as we know it is coming to an end.
Which destination do you choose for your future–
black gesso, blank white canvas beneath,
or masses of vibrant color portrayed by a dreamer?
The world as we know it is about to end.
Should we be afraid? Or welcome it with open arms?
We can rush towards the destruction of this world
fearful that what we do to others might be done to us.
Or can we find the meaning of “as we know it.”
We can paint our prophetic words
on the blackness of today’s canvas
and open a path into vibrant wondrousness.
Fiery reds of enthusiasm grow from rage and love.
Brilliant yellows of vision emerge from fear and wisdom.
Tranquil blues of confidence extend from sadness and generosity.
Mix the elements and
orange unity flares from love and wisdom,
green responsibility exudes from confidence and vision,
purple serenity deepens our enthusiasm and generosity.
Change proportions, alter hues,
search for universal, kaleidoscopic understanding.
I am old. My world is not the world I grew up in.
As a tot, my milk was cooled in a tub of water.
As a child, we never locked our doors.
As a young adult, each long distance phone call
was a major, expensive event.
When my grandmother was born, cars were not invented.
She and I watched the first man walk on the moon
on television transmitted live from outer space.
Today, internet, satellite radio, cell phones
instantly connect all parts of the world.
People without flush toilets can talk to me
from their isolated, tropical homes
as if they were next door,
and I can board a plane and visit them tomorrow,
even when it is yesterday today where they live.
We already live in “the time that is to come.”
We know the blackness of violence.
We haven’t found the path into a brilliantly colored life.
As poets, it is up to us to write on today’s black gessoed canvas
and paint the way into a spectrum that only prophets see.
Children of a World Between
(Children of the Nicaraguan Mud Pits of the Santa Clara Volcano)
They live in a world between adequate and need–
Poor enough to beg from tourists
Rich enough to live in a house
Poor enough to have an outdoor latrine
Rich enough to have a color TV
Poor enough to envy American indulgencies
Rich enough to pay for school tuitions and uniforms.
As tourists, we come to their back yard.
paying an entry fee (included in the Gray Line tour price).
The tour guide warns her charges of the dangers.
Children flock to guide adventurers into
the view of bubbling mud of the active volcanic terrain,
onto the sulfurous crust of scorching dirt
into the steam obscuring the line of safety and danger.
“Mud! Mud! It’s good for mosquito bites.”
“It’s good for arthritis.”
“Put it on your face to make you more beautiful.”
Teens carefully lower themselves into a pit,
Dig out fresh, hot mud with their hands and plastic bags,
sculpt it into bowls, vases, add fresh flowers,
that the girls sell, “For you, for you, a gift for you, one dollar,”
or into an elephant I bought from a pre-teen boy.
I think of the lives of the mothers.
One shouted in Spanish as we passed her door,
“Kenneth, remember. Use their language,”
(Speaking English is a ticket into an easier life.)
The mother of Carlos David, the boy with the glasses,
didn’t allow him to go beyond the safety of the rocks
onto the treacherously fuming crust, even for an extra American dollar.
I wonder what kind of mother I would have been if I were born
at the foot of a Nicaraguan volcano instead of in America.
I feel sad for not knowing these families better.
After half an hour of acquaintance with Kenneth, Carlos David and the pre-teen boy,
I hope the best for them and their brothers, sisters, cousins, friends and families.
I left them there, in the steam of the mud pits,
never to see or hear of them again
after giving them all a grand total of three American dollars,
a dollar each to Kenneth, Carlos David and the pre-teen boy who sculpted my elephant.
Anjolie
By Judy Hardin Cheung
She is not a child of pastels, sweet sugar or serenity.
She is a vibrant, hot spirited go-getter
living her young life in passionate colors
of reds, oranges, yellows and all the colors
not seen in soft hued, conventional rainbows,
not seen in the schematic patterns of our temporal sphere.
Her face changes with every minute of her overflowing life:
happy, mad, pouting, accusing, conciliatory, proud.
How can one so young know such emotions?
She expresses them so magnificently,
as if posing for a textbook
on human facial communications.
Anjolie, what does the future hold?
Your parents are young, and you are so fragile,
so strong, and delicate and sturdy and… and…
and all the dichotomies that all children are.
Opposites collide minute by minute
in a world unsure of which way it is going.
Whatever your outcome, whatever your mood,
our future will be in your hands.
Ascending Mt. Tai
(a sacred mountain in Shandong, China)
By Judy Hardin Cheung, Santa Rosa, CA, USA, 2005
I moved my shadow wrongly
and a butterfly is disturbed.
Where emperors laboriously climbed,
in an aerial tram we fly like gods
over tree tops and ravines,
humming accompaniment to the wind
with an occasional, raucous thunder of laughter.
Alighting near the summit
we enter a gate named the Portal of Heaven
only to complain that we must climb higher
to achieve fulfillment.
Stone steps lead ever higher,
not ancient, but recently sculpted with care
for weak legs to carry modern tourists
to experience temples and plateaus.
We tread the last step to stand beneath only the sky.
Joining sight-seers and pilgrims in temples for prayers,
we, ordinary people, have arrived in a few hours
at the pinnacle that emperors took weeks to ascend.
I value the bus, tram, stairs,
yet, feel diluted by comfort,
time schedules and
thousand of like-minded visitors.
I contemplate that I have missed,
in achieving with instant gratification,
what emperors spent time and effort
to discover.
I did not learn
how I should move
so as not to disturb a butterfly.
Published in Laurel Leaves, 2007
Sticker on the Rear View Mirror of a Bus
By Judy Hardin Cheung, Santa Rosa, CA, USA, 2000
The tour bus, carrying world poets on a Philippine tour in Luzon
had a sticker on the rear view mirror:
“Pray for us in Mindanao”
So I wonder for whom, in Mindanao, shall I pray?
Shall I pray for the Christians or the Moslems
who the news media says are fighting a religious war?
Should I pray for the landless farmers
fighting an economic war for more than starvation
in return for their life long labors?
Or should it be for the land-owners, fighting a loosing battle
to keep their land and workers in the name of feeding the country?
Or for the industrialist, supplying the world with
inexpensive products carbon copied in tropical sweat shops?
Should I pray for the Mindanao separatists wanting
an independent country for their distinct culture and language?
Or for the nationalists fighting to maintain unity
to provide a large enough base to be a viable entity in the world market?
Who and what should I pray for in Mindanao?
Should I pray that everyone understand each other
and pray for a solution to differences
and pray that everyone makes a living sufficient for comfort and choices
where everyone can feed and educated themselves and their children
and everyone can have a safe and cared-for old age
and everyone has a home and a feeling of belonging
and everyone has a sense of self determination and self esteem
and everyone lives as equals in a congregation
of different languages, cultures and nationalities
Yes, I will pray for Mindanao, as I pray for all the world.
They Say Its Only a Game
By Judy Hardin Cheung, Santa Rosa, CA, USA, 2007
I bought the video game because it was harmless.
A matching game–tiles are moved–
line up three of the same, score some points,
try to empty the board of unmatched tiles.
Safe, easy, colorful…yet sinister.
Find the jungle treasures: Gems, stone heads, gold skulls
and beautiful paper flowers–they call those tiles diamonds.
Halfway through the game, a nemesis appears–
a black monkey monster who screams every time it’s hurt.
Manipulate the monkey monsters to get extra points.
Make them scream in pain as they are eliminated.
I think of “Boogie Man” stories from my childhood
depicting monkey faced black people as monsters.
I think of Terry, Joe, Hugh, Jean, and all the other
people of African ancestry I know and feel them cry
each time the monkey monsters yowl in pain.
I think of the news reels of my youngest memories
at the movies referring to Japanese as “little yellow monkeys”
and wonder what this simple game is teaching our children.
I play round after round, level after level,
impatient to finish so I can start again
and play with greater expertise to accumulate
more points and win faster
by better manipulating the little black monkey monsters.
I have learned to cheer each time they scream,
congratulate myself, “That’s good!” as points soar higher.
But still, I wonder, what are we teaching our children?
And worse…What have I taught myself?
Published in Women’s Voices, November, 2007,
Santa Rosa, CA, USA
