Song of a Reformed Headhunter

I could not count to ten till I turned eleven. The chicks were softer than the straw in the set. One, two, buckle my shoe, nine and a big fat hen. They scratched the grass beside the shops for men. They were the best present a boy could get. I could not count to ten till I turned eleven. Mother called out from above. That was when I stepped back to answer her, stepped on my pet. One, two, buckle my shoe, nine and a big fat hen. The grass turned black. Its head was not broken. Father could fix things but he was not home yet. I could not count to ten till I turned eleven. The Shopgirl cried out, Poke it back in! The mitten with one loose strand was moving. It felt wet. One, two, buckle my shoe, nine and a big fat hen. My hands did what the woman said. Even then, I could not save it. But I could not forget. I could not count to ten till I turned eleven. One, two, buckle my shoe, nine and a big fat hen.

on Lu Xun (1881–1936) His ailing father was China but the cure was not Confucius whom the son threw out, along with the physician. His father died and, in another city, the meaning stood up like a shadow on a wall, when he turned into a street limned by electric lamps. He led the shadow home and put to bed the shade between the lines in Call to Arms . There, the dead coughed into the porcelain throat of the spittoon and called out in a red voice to his sons black-suited, their queues cut off, lovers of Huxley, Gogol, Shaw and Marx, called out in a darkening voice for light.

My source informs me you’ve acquired a catch of boys to staff Happy Establishment. Yes, one may find a peony in a shithole— quite right, I have a discriminating nose. Not for me, or my friend here, the common flower roll in the Precious Mirror , well-known boys cultivated to sing, dance, and recite Shakespeare to please the tourists, foreign devils. They are no longer Chinese in the most vital sense of the word. Not virginal. To be premature is to be perfect , you agree? No locals I hope. They are like spit on the street, everywhere. This boy from Anhui? Clean and smooth-skinned as Baiji river dolphins. They swim apart yet surface together for air. Observe the purple blot on the other’s neck, the way it throws his bloom into relief. So a defile makes a Guizhou rock sublime and one never tires of admiring it. Rarer still—an unspoiled Uygur just arrived from Xinjiang. See, friend, how his thighs whipcord as we speak of him. Centuries of horse-riding over highlands and deserts. A good mou...

River Sighting by a Man Who Walks Daily I came upon a young man sitting by the edge of the river, his hair gleaming like gold coins, body white against the granite bed, thighs slipping into green water. Under the breeze-rippled leaves, he studied a book as if to find his way back home. Like seaweed rising from dark corals, rushes eddied round him while geese, sea cattle, browsed on grass. He stretched as though to throw a javelin. The river lapped at him. I followed his eyes—on the opposing bank a woman pushed a stroller. Her breasts, taut with milk, jutted under her thin shirt like double prows. He waved to her and swung out of the water, stepped into his sandals. But the other man, no, fish, flashing its salmon tail, slipped back to the estuary. Another Sighting, This Time by a Niece We dived out of the sun. The waiting room was dark as underwater pictures in my storybooks. Tom disappeared to the back after making sure I had a magazine. Men followed him. I heard ocean murmurings, at ...

Invented by Julie Carter, a julain is a 3-line poem with a discernible meter and rhymed ABB. The lonely fork above his thigh below her sigh

Finding Recorded in a Ship Log Finally Dylan falls asleep. My face returns and finds you sleeping too, after revealing who you are, unraveling the knots that lashed us both together. I look at you, the treasure of my deep-sea trawl, and sort out the invertebrates, fish, corals, weeds— the times you called the lab to say you were working late, the grimace of your eyes whenever you groped my breasts, the shadow swimming above your smile when I announced, I’m late. You must be tired resisting the roll of the boat. You sprawl in bed as on a lightbox, each muscle delicate as scales, each gap a gasping gill. Your loveliness must be preserved in formalin and mounted behind glass, above the fireplace, like a prehistoric monstrous white fish.

Another Sighting, This Time by a Niece Diving out of the sun, the waiting room was dark like underwater pictures in my storybooks. Tom disappeared to the back after making sure I had a magazine. Men followed him. I heard ocean murmurings, at times, a dolphin squeak. They spoke of finding themselves, as if lost, or wrecked. Tom’s rough voice sketched how he was stranded among men, in bars last week, wishing his brother were with him. He reads me bedtime stories every Sunday night though I’m too old for that. I like real stories better, how he and Dad fought over girls, how much he loves and misses Dad. Tom hugs me as if his arms are short. In his webbed hands, last Sunday night, before he left, I hung round his neck, feathers unfurled in my chest.

River Sighting by a Man Who Walked Daily I came upon a young man sitting by the edge of the river, his hair gleaming like gold coins, body white against granite, thighs slipping into the green water. Under the wreaths of leaves, he studied his book as if to find his way back home. Like seaweed rising from corals, rushes eddied round him while geese browsed on grass. He stretched as though to throw a javelin and the river lapped at him. I followed his gaze and saw on the opposite bank a woman pushing a stroller. Her breasts, taut with milk, jutted under her thin shirt like twin-prows. He waved to her, swung out of the water and stepped into his sandals. The other, flashing his salmon tail, slipped back to the estuary.

So we’ve set our armies down on the colored continents; she is watching every frown on her boyfriend’s countenance. He reminds her it’s her turn and her plan for conquest too. When he launches his return, she cedes to him Peru. Her luck holds; her rule extends from Australia to the Middle East. Then he stops the game and stands. Her domain is but leased.

Seeing his name embossed in gold, I'd press a bell at the slight hall and ask for him. Instead, the lift ushers the fearful and the bold and those untouched by death at all to the third floor where mourners drift across the Ruby and the Jade to the Pearl Room, at Singapore Casket. He lies in simple state. Around him flutter living shades, three closest: the old scolding bore, the daughter loved, the son, his hate. The sisters blame the beer the most. The brothers noisily contest and count, below their breath, their days to bet them on an empty boast. Indulgently, their wives protest: not one of them will change his ways. The black hearse leaves the iron gate with less than Sunday racing haste he used to study as a pundit. No one bets on his eventual fate but those who do not wish to waste plate numbers’ luck in lottery fund it. We sing to fill our lungs with love, hymns to the God he didn’t embrace, recite the prayers for our sake: Enter the pearly gate above, relax in silken sheet...

I am a dog. That is accord- ing to the Chinese. I’m born a Pekinese to lick the fingers of karaoke singers and nose the crotches of waiters, wanderers and watchers and roll over for a hand on the soft reverse of my haunch. I cannot stop an avalanche of blood. Blame, if you must, my star. Last night, outside the bar, skin tingling after kneading your shoulders in a stranger’s boulders and pressing up against his chest harder than your rest, I saw a dog tied to a parking meter sniff the perimeter drawn by the length of a new leash’s strength. The owner came (the animal was barking joyfully) at a jog. I am that dog. * I am one of three featured readers at the Back Fence on Jan 15 (Sun). If you happen to be in Manhattan that day, do drop by and say hi. Date: Jan 15, 2006 (Sun) Time: 3-5 p.m. Place: Back Fence pub, 155 Bleecker Street (corner of Thompson) Directions: 6 to Lafayette and Bleecker, 4 blocks west; E, F, B, D, Q, A, C to W 4th St., south to Bleecker and 3 blocks east; N, R to Pr...

for my sister, Yin Peng With bridal pride, you guide me round the mock estate, constructed in its Perspex case with cardboard, tape and glue: the tower block, the tennis courts, the children’s swimming pool, in whose blue ring you cannot see your face but trust the drafting compass, plumb line, rule. You spoke of how you settled what will be, after his arduous courtship. Your new base on land wrestled from South China Sea is a settlement wavering in the steam, buzzing with insects, gripped by jungle days, so that the blueprint bleaches like a dream. But what a dream! Imagining the move from swamp to windows, tall, generous space. As much an act of courage as of love. An earlier version titled "Home Purchase" was published in the "Quarterly Literary Review of Singapore".

Fu-jian Province, 15th century Spent, you crawl up my flank and hear the flood subside. This light on us is of the moon. Again you ask me to divine our wellspring at Guan-Yin Temple lucky for rain-prayers. When you strode to the altar, how the men stared at your unblemished skin, your strong limbs swathed in a much-mended jacket made of goat. The gods desired you, even the Jade Emperor. Of all those powdered faces there, you spoke to the plainest. Can you explain why? No? Nor can I. Mother drank your cup of tea and loved you as her favorite son-in-law. In that year, Xuan-zong abdicated breath. His son’s reign inaugurated our days of picking pekoe leaves on rippling slopes, and nights of sipping tea. A week of years. Don’t forget the presents for your bride. I’ve packed and left them on the kang for you. She’s gentle, pretty, with child-bearing hips. Your fathers must have sons to sacrifice at the ancestral altar, offer meat and wine, or else their ghosts get hungry. As the dead sage di...

We needed something to cover the naked floor, delighted though we were with the concrete space, having moved from a box shared by four families. When Eighth Aunt was throwing out her linoleum tiles, my father rushed us to her house. I carted stacks of light and dark brown squares to the taxi. With no plan in mind, Father tore the paper off and stuck a tile in a corner of the floor. Stripes lined up with horizontal stripes he improvised before Mother suggested an alternating pattern, a prettier shape. By then, many tiles were stuck down. As a compromise, two designs co-existed. We covered their room with light brown which ran Out, so the last four squares were the darker shade. Tiles crawled out of line because of earlier mistakes. Afterwards, faults in the floor, laughed over in the fit of work, widened into permanent fissures. That came later. When I pressed the last tile down, Father walked out to the corridor to smoke and stared through the doorway at the work. Then he went off for ...

I’m waiting in the covered bridge straddling Platforms One and Two, with tracks that run along a ridge; I’m thinking hard of you. Snow flies like midges by the light and dies in the black hands of trees. The platforms, outlined by the white, wait like a pair of skis. From your direction, a train chants, then chatters under me like hope: I’m standing in a giant’s pants, hurtling down the slope. * I am one of three featured readers at the Back Fence on Jan 15 (Sun). If you happen to be in Manhattan that day, do drop by and say hi. Date: Jan 15, 2006 (Sun) Time: 3-5 p.m. Place: Back Fence pub, 155 Bleecker Street (corner of Thompson) Directions: 6 to Lafayette and Bleecker, 4 blocks west; E, F, B, D, Q, A, C to W 4th St., south to Bleecker and 3 blocks east; N, R to Prince St., north to Bleecker and 3 blocks west. No cover; 1 Drink Minimum + Tip Open-mic.

Like shiny well-fed seals, two squealing boys fought, over nothing, arm thrashing against gold arm, spending their health extravagantly. One dunked the other, held him down, arms tensed. Their swimming coach, a man in his late fifties, rose up beside them, water sluicing down his sedimental torso. When he yelled for them to stop and rapped one on the crown, the rebel stuck out his tongue like a finger, the other dived and slapped his own back side. The coach threatened to tell their dads. They laughed. And not continue teaching them, he lied. They’d not have mocked him in those sun-streaked days spent crawling long, interminable laps under the watchful eye of champion trainers, those breathless mornings when the colored caps were stretched so taut they seemed ready to leap off the block, the gunshot. He shook his head. Squinting into the sun, he saw the glare of light, the air, and something, somewhere, dead.

Dishwasher-safe, the glass medical grade, the dildo is hand-blown from the same element as brandy balloons, milk bottles, picture tubes and silicone implants; in other words, it’s made of prose. The form is poetry. It jabs as hard as Japanese harpoons or, callipygian glide, curves like the spine of the sperm whale, so slick and sleek a slide. The fired figure’s ribbed with filigree: a tree trunk ivied by plump veins, a caterpillar’s burrs, carelessly rocky road or studded Braille, or else it’s scored by ruts and flutes. (For Puritans, the glass also comes plain; for Quakers, terse.) More than mouth-pleasure, the lacunae gawk at lattachino work, the twists of lemon, gold and blue inside, not painted on, the shoot of fiberglass; the mists compressed to chalk; or the dichroic head unveiling two blushes when viewed from different spots, G or prostate. Van Gogh’s The Starry Night may wet one’s thighs but it’s too rectangular and paste-thick for a shot, unlike the borosilicate. Stars and mo...

My followers, I am about to turn immortal. After ingesting cinnabar for years, I’ll soon become like Princely Qiao and Song. You know the costs, I have spoken of them, when I was stricken by the longing to live, how longing broke and drove me out of me— resigned from lucrative town-temple posts, slept in a different bedroom from my wife, and even sent away the serving boy. When lust sneaked past the bodyguards yet again, I ran away to live in mountain caves, ate aerial roots, blue stamens and stone ears. The Master of the Bamboo Grove is right, the musk deer grows fragrant from eating cedar and so I drained my body of its swamp. You know how many come to mock my work. Armed with their science and senses, they joke, “Immortals must be good at lying low!” They see the worms on cusps of lips and think death is the common lot. The fools! The fools! To eke one living from the land and ache over the scrimped allotment! So I leave them to their fates and ready mine for change. The thorny lime...

This happened in Jiangnan Province in 1658—on Mao Xiang’s country estate, Chen Weisong met and flirted with servant-actor Xu Ziyun beneath the plum trees. Chen was thirty-two years old and Xu was fifteen and famous for his flute-playing. When Mao wanted to punish Xu for aspiring above his status, Chen pleaded on the servant’s behalf. Mao demanded from Chen one hundred poems on the subject of the plum blossom the next morning in exchange for not punishing Xu. After Mao had received the poems, he released Xu to Chen. Being only one-tenth the poet Chen Weisong was, I wrote ‘Ten Poems on the Plum Blossom’ for my Xu who is also my Mao. 1. The old branch blossoms in the snow, pink lips on a low brown bough. I see your face in the whitewashed hall and remember home in Singapore. 2. Back home in Velvet Underground last year, you stuttered your coming-out in a poetry slam. I did not hear your pink confession then. Now in New York, I hear you loud and queer. 3. Walking down Broadway, you digress...

I wake up hard and tight. The stem is flushed with sap. It sprouted in the night from clay and gas and trap. I don’t recall the dream that fed the blind taproot. Perhaps the stud in the steam taking off his boot? The plant is strong with blood. It holds a singular bloom. It gives and wilts, and buds again in any room. Decaying below the ground, adorable above, within the flesh are bound the stalks of lust and love. * I am one of three featured readers at the Back Fence on Jan 15 (Sun). If you happen to be in Manhattan that day, do drop by and say hi. Date: Jan 15, 2006 (Sun) Time: 3-5 p.m. Place: Back Fence pub, 155 Bleecker Street (corner of Thompson) Directions: 6 to Lafayette and Bleecker, 4 blocks west; E, F, B, D, Q, A, C to W 4th St., south to Bleecker and 3 blocks east; N, R to Prince St., north to Bleecker and 3 blocks west. No cover; 1 Drink Minimum + Tip Open-mic.