HONG KONG
John Who Wears Black
12th June 2019, Admiralty, Hong Kong protests alongside ten thousand youths now called rioters now reduced to statistics disregarded by the one in power the dowager who holes up in the golden interior of her palace her yellow curtains her …
Midsummer
Pale sky high clouds the heat soaks into the concrete making shadows out of everything it’s the Establishment of Summer again the city open to light and humidity see the dust gnats pollen tinsels of pollution the sweat on my …
Tomorrows
If I walk on a Hong Kong street for long enough, I will eventually bump into someone I know from a long time ago. So long ago that each of us wilfully resorts to deceptive amnesia. There are streets in …
The Visitation
My paternal grandmother came to me in a dream and said: I have no money and I’m cold. I recounted the visitation to my parents— They had forgotten to burn for my granny paper money, paper clothes—offerings sent to the …
One Person
If I tell you my full name, will you only say it when I drown or fall? Which protest poster will you carry around close to your chest like an oversized pendant? Have you been served gas or spray? Where …
Your Name in My Lexicon Means Yes
Once, you talked to me on the phone, I complained about the loud wind obscuring your voice. You responded: Baby, I can’t make the wind stop. The creation of meanings takes three steps: saying yes, singing no, unbinding maybe, and …
This May Be a Love Poem
We are ugly but we have the words, even if no one reads them. We carry no axes, unready to kill. Or turn on the oven until it warms. trains have passed us since the day we were born and …
Nebulous Vertigo
It is one of the days that I sit here like an abyss. The sky, soft and introspective, my mind opens a gap that opens another gap that is not simply air, but a circling coolness when shame jars the …
Article XII: Autonomy
The autumn shall be a desert of the hard road, which shall enjoy a high degree of brightness and floating clouds directly under the white sun. The white sun shall be the bright blanket of heaven, which shall enjoy a …
Dining Alone
The sky watches like yesterday. The stars haven’t finished predicting. The door doesn’t drag on— A fly, sprawled, pushes to enter. The candles bruise their souls, the wind, outside, refrains from stepping in once more. Dinner comes, doesn’t know where …
Preface: Important Notice
This poem repurposes text from the first page of the publicly-distributed, print version of the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s constitution. This booklet is not the Basic Law. This booklet contains the Basic Law but is not the Law itself. The …
Almost Greatness
Superficiality just kills here, from its concrete roots to its bamboo tips. The nakedness of the city unravels as the MTR zips down the navel Of its shorn planes, towards the exposed tip at the edge of the harbour. There …
Passing
Passing by the quiet morning street on June 4th, in one shop there were three young hogs lying dead, streaked in their own blood next to the crimson family shrine, the last of the incense burned to the base. One …
Pak Tai Street
Sundays on Pak Tai Street, outside the royal blue and ornate gold of the no-longer regal Jockey Club, flocks of strange birds with rectangular wings are gripped by gnarled hands stained with black ink, congregating on gritty, uneven sidewalks and …
Last Days of August
It’s a concrete August swelter in Hong Kong this year, Where even the sidewalk cracks melt into uniformity, Steamed by the slower, sun-broiled diminished crush of the city, Lower Kowloon’s consumed in a rare seasonal siesta, Its denizens for once …
2.
Translated from Chinese by Henry Wei Leung. pure spring gush · mirror heaven earth karmascape life death since · no-name water · no return no advance great sea small raft · docking at the last life farewell beneath a harbinger …
Annie, Anyone?
Annie, anyone petrified by loving ones, manufacturers into placid, plastic smiles kissed by many practitioners who must learn to say ‘Annie, anyone, are you okay?’ Annie, anyone’s chest’s pressed in case of cardiac arrest. Some stormed out of the room …
1.
Translated from Chinese by Henry Wei Leung. empty sea empty · this wave comes that wave goes thousand-year wave watching the wind can’t see the last life · can’t see the next lifetime straddling water · Guan-beholding-pitchblack-sound-yin to have nothing …
Students Said
‘he was next to me’ students said ‘i could only run away’ students said ‘when the baton hit his head’ students said ‘i ran away’ students said ‘when he was caught’ students said ‘he screamed his name’ students said ‘and …
