by Xingyu Zhao
After Boey Kim Cheng’s Clear Brightness
Apples, persimmons, and orange sponge cakes
Shining under halogen glare, and mother and I
Watch Bai Wuchang toss his divining blocks,
Inviting the spirits to enter papier-mâché
Dolls dressed in red silk robes. Peachwood
Tablets sway above their heads in humid wind,
Pregnant with the scent of lilies and peonies,
And the dragon and phoenix candles wink
Like a pair of blue-red eyes in the night.
The thick, black calligraphy of their names
Smudge and fade as the drizzle keeps time
With the drums and cymbals, falling in fits
Like the heaving of a great grey throat. We
Relight the snuffed-out joss sticks, curved
As palm-lines, curled cypress leaves nearby
Reaching like a child’s swollen fingers.
I remember my mother telling me years ago
About my brother, unborn within the palpating
Ocean of her womb, how she dreamed
That night of a boy speaking of loneliness.
We brush the dolls’ hair, tie brown, slender
Rivulets together, cat’s cradle of buried
Memory. Carrying reams of paper money,
Rolexes, and a bungalow, we set all alight,
Watching the smoke funnel skyward
Like branching capillaries, painting the moon
Chiaroscuro. We pour liquor around the pyre,
The dolls crumbling into fire, their names
Plunging into darkness. Children circle us,
Collecting powdered ash with their fingertips,
Laughing, shouting, It’s snowing.
Xingyu Zhao is reading literature on the sunny island of Singapore. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in CAMEL, The Wild Umbrella, Cordite Poetry Review, Portside Review, and Funicular Magazine among others.
January House Literary Journal 
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