By Aiden Heung

Rare to walk into an empty village

in this country, where autumn

has fattened persimmons, each

hanging like an unlit lantern.

At nooks abandoned yellow

of chrysanthemums, phantoms

of fragrance frigid on cobbled

roads. A dozen houses,

wooden boards bolted,

whose termite-ridden grey

sinks into mottled walls,

where dust gathers on clayed

eaves. In the square, baskets

of little harvest, like inlays

on an undone fresco; only

a pillar with fading calligraphy

telling a story of tea, simple

stuff, traded across provinces

by merchants whose heirs

now, migrant workers. I think

I’m the only tourist here;

even my breath sounds stern,

like struggling water in drying

brooks; Otherwise, stillness burns

like useless incense for a quiet

god, who changes as the village

has changed. I too wear a face

of the past, like a marbled

thing, like this village

with a pale crumbled

veneer, time’s exquisite error.

Aiden Heung (He/They) is a Chinese poet born in a Tibetan Autonomous Town, currently living as a traveling coating salesman. If he is not on the road selling water-repellent solutions, you can always find him writing poems in one of the Costa Cafes in Shanghai. His poems written in English have appeared in The Australian Poetry Journal, The Missouri Review, Atlanta Review, Parentheses, Crazyhorse, and Black Warrior Review among other places. He can be found on Twitter @aidenheung.

By Aiden Heung

The waves come to the bund clapping

like hands when the skyline blasts

into light; Many people scuffle

to the cobbled riverside, a moving

collage in which I’m a clown’s

toy, tossed amidst a sea of colors

that abrade my eyes; my hands blurred,

bruised by the hue slung onto my skin.

Has the night fallen? Because

every place now is a non-place

and every face, a misplaced metaphor

in the long stretch of night.

If only I could burst out of this body

and become—

But the sound of waves swells

and swings, swings and smashes

into sound smithereens, a strange

reminder that I’m strung into a dis-

array of elements, and waves, yes

waves have come to the rescue—

a few drowned stars, bony

high-rises, the city that floats

off-kilter on its chromatic

reflection. A bloated landscape

on water that will be scraped clean,

before we notice, by iron claws

of the day, and the waves, too,

will disappear.