Translated by Ouyang Yu
in the elevator, four or five people
greeted each other mechanically
i was embarrassed
they were all in their forties or fifties
— even i, the youngest, was thirty-odd years of age
my vicious eyes were staring at a mouth
magnifying it
i found it extremely ugly
— how many lives it had consumed all its life!
About Ouyang Yu
Ouyang Yu is an award-winning poet, novelist and translator. His first novel,
The Eastern Slope Chronicle, won the 2004 South Australian Festival Award for Innovation in Writing. His third novel,
The English Class, won the 2011 NSW Premier's Award, and his 14th collection of poetry,
Terminally Poetic (2020), won the Judith Wright Calanthe Award for a Poetry Book in the 2021 Queensland Literary Awards. Recent works include the novels
All the Rivers Run South (Puncher and Wattmann, 2003) and
The Sun at Eight or Nine (Puncher and Wattmann, 2025), and the collection of short stories
The White Cockatoo Flower (Transit Lounge 2024).
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