Ms. Judy Hardin Cheung, Santa Rosa, California, USA;
UPLI Secretary/Treasurer/Editor/webmaster/Membership Chair Poets of the Vineyard Chapter of CaliforniaFederation 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
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 SonomaStateDevelopmentalCenter, Eldridge,CA.
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, 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.
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.
Anjolie, neice of Judy Hardin Cheung
As we raise our children, we must remember that they become what we teach them. Their future is in our hands. Our future is in their 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
