Invisible Gifts

by Maw Shein Win

Overview

In her first full-length collection of poems, Win depicts a colorful world imbued with unexpected paradoxes: nature is both comforting and savagely unnerving; love is permanent and fleeting; the accuracy and flaws of memory abound. Her experiences with illness and recovery intertwine with her identity as a Burmese American daughter of immigrant doctors, flowing in poems like “Hands”: My father’s hands, frail birds, shaking wings. / In Burmese, “win” means bright. / Hands that stitched skin together and brought back life. Win’s unique perspective and artful language offer readers insight into how the heart can bend and mend without breaking.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781945665080
Publisher:	Manic D Press, Inc.
Publication date:	05/01/2018
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Maw Shein Win is a Burmese American poet, editor, and educator who lives and works in the Bay Area. Her writing has appeared in many journals and several anthologies, including Cimarron Review, Fanzine, Eleven Eleven, The Fabulist, and Cross-Strokes: Poetry Between Los Angeles and San Francisco. She was an artist-in-residence at Headlands Center for the Arts, and is a member of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto. She often collaborates with visual artists, musicians, and other writers. Win’s poetry is featured in artist Megan Wilson’s mural, Flower Interruption, a featured artwork in the special exhibition Flower Power at San Francisco's Asian Art Museum. She is the first Poet Laureate of El Cerrito.

Table of Contents

Blue Bells

Home 9

The Wedding Party 11

The Stalled Engine 13

Stipulations 14

The Hula Skirt 15

Brutal 16

Cast Away 17

Objects 18

The Dressing Stick 19

The Wheelchair 20

Things That Begin with S 21

Stray Cakes 22

Sorter Animals 23

Mothers 24

Dragonfly 26

Nine 27

Limes 28

You Will Be with Me in a Town Called Paradise 29

Pink Light

Gold Barns Above Sea Level 33

Time Machine 34

Art in America 35

Sparrow 36

Pixie 37

Beehives of Joy and Bliss 38

The Unexpected Visit 40

Dust and Smoke 42

The General 43

Blindfolds 44

The Contract 45

I hate programming without free will 46

Patrol 47

The Misfortunes of Guan Yin 48

The Indexing of Sensation 50

Are You in the Room with Me Now? 51

Silvery Moth

Kick the Can 55

Eye to eye, they solemnly convene to make the scene 56

Spine 57

More Time to Do Nothing 58

Close Ups 59

Ruins of a Glittering Palace 60

Long Shot 61

The Farm Without Name 62

Sometimes We Find Our Eyes 63

Falling 64

Polychromatic Scenes 65

Under the Pyramids 66

Film #3 67

Collective Dreams 68

Mine 69

The Treachery of Images 70

Warning 71

Questions for the Silvery Moth 72

The Greenhouse

Invisible Gifts 75

Flower Instructions 76

Shigo no sekai 77

Another World 78

Durian 79

Listen 80

The Worried Man 81

Hands 82

Lost Horse Valley 83

The Missing 84

Portrait of a Landscape 85

Skin of Oxygen 86

Fish with Teeth 87

Fortunes 88

Grapefruit 89

5:47 p.m. 90

Cellars and Bells 92

Almond Trees 93

Oars (elegy for sister) 94