Nancy Chen Long
March 2015
Nancy Chen Long received a BS in Electrical Engineering Technology and an MBA, worked as an electrical engineer, software consultant, and project manager, and more recently earned an MFA. She is the author of the chapbook Clouds as Inkblots for the War Prone (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2013). You’ll find her recent and forthcoming work in Mason’s Road, Sycamore Review, Boxcar Poetry Review, and elsewhere. As a volunteer with the local Writers Guild, Nancy offers poetry workshops and coordinates a reading series for poets. In addition, she writes poetry-book reviews and interview poets at readwritepoetry.blogspot.com
“My Own Shepherd”
How shall we touch this lovely
bruise, exquisite as a violet stone?
So winsome, the ministry of lies.
I will not always bow down
to strange roads unknown,
pass into shadow, cold and bare.
What matter? There is no table
of enemies. I have a quiet foe.
Erasure. Source “January 22nd – My Own Shepherd” from My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year, by John Henry Jowett (1914)