Approaching Winter
Rice-spilled traffic in the south-west suburbs
Deciphering another Cabramatta afternoon
Your tongue scraped clean of possible meanings
The alleyway is stacked with palettes of bitter melon
Deciphering another Cabramatta afternoon
Your mother’s groceries, unpronounceable and strange
The alleyway is stacked with palettes of bitter melon
Endless Cantonese inflections you hope to discern
Your mother’s groceries, unpronounceable and strange
Now a Honda Civic ghosts over the train line
Trailing Cantonese inflections you will never discern
In the fish shop a mud crab slowly raises its claw
As a Honda civic ghosts over the train line
You dream of your grandfather’s village dialect
In the fish shop a mud crab slowly raises its claw
A single gesture you can somehow understand
You dream in your grandfather’s village dialect
Your tongue scraped clean of possible meanings
A single gesture you can somehow understand
Rice-spilled traffic in the south-west suburbs
Meditation on Autumn Meditation (7)
After Du Fu
The lake’s surface as smooth as a retina display in Shenzen.
Those push notifications flagging you down in every tracked location.
On a street corner a girl pauses alongside the moon-earth
of WeChat’s load screen. Beneath global winds tossing
their payments through black clouds she shivers like
a unicorn’s flanks after an earnings forecast. The sky
pastes hidden scripts into its edges, coding a present no-one
ever imagined (28,000 rivers missing, incessant phishing).