Even the Java Sparrows Call Your Hair

Book excerpt: Poetry. EVEN THE JAVA SPARROWS CALL YOUR HAIR is a bright book amidst dark times. Witness a young woman birthing a perfectly oval egg or learn the ropes of the Wang Wei Board Game, taking on the role of a lute or a panda chewing bamboo. Kalamaras's electric poems move delicately between Eastern mystic thought, surrealism, and meditations on the human body and soul. They suggest that the body's true spiritual worth can be discovered in its connectivity with the universe, alighting a pony on the tongue or an ascending angel out of the spine: His quieter musings work not so much as to question, but to point out a direction of understanding: "When you pull the earth apart to plant iris bulbs, what is that purple bending at the back of your throat? What bird sings in the Chinese elm with your vocal chords and the step of your weight that leaves traces of threatening sky on pointed leaves?"