You Left Without Your Shoes by Kenji Liu

As a writer, one of the biggest challenges I have faced has been writer’s block.  Trauma can do that to a writer—the voice can just be lost.  When I looked at the page and found I could no longer write I decided I would help other writers.  That is why I decided to do what I do today.  I’m an editor because I can’t find my own voice…I still can’t find it…so I help others bring their words alive—to print.  And, this is where I need to be right now.  I enjoy discovering new talent and encouraging others.  I love it when a writer publishes his or her first book with me, and then goes on to win a book award and then publishes book after book…. There is just something great about that.  Today I want to share the work of a very gifted poet with you.  Here is a poem by Kenji Liu.  I selected Kenji’s book You Left Without Your Shoes for publication:

Pink 

your last hours are

deep fallen rose and           

              broken pomegranate seeds

              on hospital sheets           

                      still      body    warm

                               you      might   return

                         you do not need anymore           

                  the pillow, your cradle lost      

                 on the bathroom floor i hover             dive

                for your hairs

                                    extinct fruit. 

Praise for You Left Without Your Shoes by Kenji Liu

“From the shreds of grief and displacement, Kenji Liu has woven whole cloth. These are exquisite poems, sculpted and flowing, the lines meant to be caressed by the reader’s eyes, the words read aloud for the ears. You don’t have to try to remember this poet’s name – Kenji Liu will, without a doubt, in time establish himself as one of our major American poets.” 
Patricia Y. Ikeda, featured in the award-winning documentary film, Between the Lines: Asian American Women's Poetry

“Beautiful seems too cliche a word for these poems that are original and effused with love, and
memory and loss and ties that link one generation to the next regardless of time and circumstance. Kenji Liu artfully opens up your heart with these lucid poems.”
Opal Palmer Adisa, latest collection, I Name Me Name

“In You Left Without Your Shoes, Kenji Liu engages and entangles his reader in a conversation, a testament, an ocean, a desert of memory, a flight, a witness towards the survival of loss and what lies beyond. These multi-layered poems, tender and resilient, fly towards the possible.”
Ching-In Chen, The Heart's Traffic

Kenji Liu holds an MA in anthropology from the California Institute of Integral Studies. As a 1.5 generation Japanese-born Taiwanese American expatriate of New Jersey suburbia, his writing explores the politics of  migration, memory, culture, history, mourning and joy. His work is in Tea Party Magazine, Kartika Review and the Political and Legal Anthropology Review. Kenji is currently working on a full-length collection experimenting with printed images, poetry, prose, memoir and other textual fragments. He lives in Oakland.

Kenji is new to Red Room.  I hope more Finishing Line Press authors will join us here.

To preorder You Left Without Your Shoes by Kenji Liu visit Finishing Line Press's website and scroll to the "L" section: http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm