Induction, a Short One
People often say
In this country
There is no need for fiction making
Life is fiction
Reality is surreality
Worse, or, better
Life is but death
Relived
…
Ash Tea
A glass of tea
A flip-open computer
And a plastic bowl
Of water
Form the life of this author
Whose name happens to be Zhen
And who keys
To the accompaniment of birds
Singing in a spring of unlove
Every now and then
He knocks the ash, the ashes
Of his chain ciggies
Till he accidentally
In the keying of a particular word or phrase
That he now has difficulty remembering
—Say the difference between
The singing of a bird in Royal Shanghai
And that, the cackling, of a bird
In Kingsbury—knocks the ashes
Into his tea
In the instant in which
He trashes his tea in the sink
A detail emerged, from a past
Wallowing in Wollongong
Where he had his first taste of salty coffee
When he realized, belatedly
That the common room of the common place
Had bags of sugar and salt
And he, the unwitting one, picked the wrong
One and that makes all
The difference
Hot Dry Noodles
Hot dry noodles
A Wuhan variety
Are noodles you make hot
By soaking them in hot waters
And de-watering them in a sieve
Like container
Before pouring them steaming in a bowl
Topped with sesame jam
Soy sauce, vinegar and chili sauce
In today’s news
A woman passenger in a subway
That shows such stations as Xunlimen
Turns it into a face-covering bomb
By doing exactly that
Onto another woman photographing her on her mobile
With the intention of putting it on her Weibo
For all the world to see
How uncivilized someone is
When eating hot dry noodles in a crowded compartment
The upshot? There is no upshot
The throwing woman gone, on heels oiled
And the photographing woman telling the story to the media
Her face red and hot, from the oncoming
Noodles
Dad Calling
The distraught father appears on the scene
Holding a mobile phone to his ear, calling:
I beg you, I beg you
His ‘you’, right now, as the camera directs the eye
Is sitting high, forty meters above the ground
Perched on the edge of a high-voltage tower
And the reason, according to the father
Is no more than pretty minor things:
Not buying pretty clothes as she has wanted
Or picking on her over a meal
But here she is, sitting pretty, pretty high
Wearing thin, too, not only her dad’s patience
Till the snow, unknowing, comes
And the waiting airbags, forty meters down below
And half a meter thick
Are keenly disappointed
As the rescuer inches towards her
Till she ropes her up, mobile phone in hand
You now hear her dad calling there, decibels reduced
I beg you, I beg you
The Manhole Cover
If nothing is stealable in this unstealable world
The manhole cover, of all things
Remains hot property, for the unholy
In this city, whose name escapes one
Because of the fast flow of the read news
A cover is uncovered, leaving the street gaping, in the middle
The traffic flows
The motorcyclists encircle it
And, fortunately enough, no pedestrians have the sense to jump in
Until a young man arrives, on his motorbike
He stops, as the camera shows, and erects a broom
As he makes phone calls
Soon a policeman arrives on the scene
And a truck, too, carrying a cover
A size too large for the hole
Years ago, one recalls
In faraway Wuhan
A tiny little girl disappears one afternoon
Sucked in as if by the devil within
Thanks to the young man, in this stealable city
Whose broom serves as a reminder
That the country rises every morning
With steable covers, for the gaping man
Hole
Wafer Thin
Everything goes wafer thin, now
My apple computer, for example
An emaciated beauty woman, for another
Thus it is no surprise when
The ground, wafer thin, gave way in Shenzhen
Revealing a four-storey-deep cave
Right at the entrance
It is with regret, the newsreader says
That the doorman, 21, fell, instantly into it
His body later discovered, miles away
In a sewer