Approaching Winter & Meditation on Autumn Meditation (7)

 

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).

 

Lachlan Brown

Author: Lachlan Brown

Lachlan Brown’s latest book of poetry, Lunar Inheritance (Giramondo, 2017) explores his Chinese-Australian heritage. His poems have appeared in journals including Mascara, Heat, Antipodes, Kitaab, and Cha. Lachlan has been shortlisted, highly commended and placed in various awards including the Judith Wright Poetry Prize, the Blake Poetry Prize, the Newcastle Poetry Prize, and the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize. He lives in Wagga Wagga where he teaches literature and creative writing at Charles Sturt University.