a kettle to fend off the ghosts
見人說人話，見鬼說鬼話1
a waxen sky doors slowly and one could be forgiven for un-noticing
the green stars and sek-kia at your feet, rolling
drape the clouds with a sheet that stiffens into the shape of scent
poke your finger through its lackadaisical unfurling
you have known this sky longer than I
the shift in shade and when to buckle off for food and remedy
an algebra all their own you once wrote, 鬼 and this city of fortune tellers
vendors whose names cackle as coins fall in a tin cup
wide boulevards tunnel adjacent alleyways & spark up love among the rats,
teens and shadows beneath betel-nut neon, love goes wrong in the flicker
the pace of pans against spoons, the slivery bite of bedraggled love
slack in its sleepless moving, composing mouths and Epicurean limbs
the gnaw of selling rain stumbles down a mossy wall
where unseen language collapses as spiders crawl into hindsight
the seasonal verisimilitude of the scratching tug in our heart
shadows stand up against the stone where a rat’s tail swings with couple’s arms
in the night where the size and heat and drunken babble meet
sister, how many years have we unpacked one another
cards knuckled and shuffled by an unseen hand flat on the green
the tiny cough behind the night market’s stall where tofu and oil gripe
shall we speak the language of people or the language of ghosts1
our bodies undone a tent in a monsoon, life longs as the moon dents
high in the mountains cigarettes burn and the earth trembles, snakes bow breath
you taught me to read the weather the way old women carry their bags on their backs
one eye skyward, the other ground
the dead speak in the whisper of the leaves in the canopy
as the young saddle their scooters with boots filled with anguish and ba-wan
romance every evening in the sound of two bodies together, 台灣
once we believed
you bumped into my life beneath the Sakura in Spring
but I lost you again under the rubble of an umbrella in Tamsui
was it Spring when you returned in the morning as A-ma poured death from a kettle
to fend off the ghosts, words unchoked the tea
as stories drooled between our teeth and our lives unwrapped
now flowers grow from our mouths in the folds of Chiayi
is it Spring again, no longer in the mirror
what we are before we were, yesteryear.
1 the proverb can be translated as: speak the language of humans when meeting a human, speak the language of ghosts (devils) when meeting a ghost (devil)
For: Wan-li and the poet Victoria Chang
