Human Spring

ADHD

Should your attention stray to ducks by the river, as they walk and poop at the

same time, forgive yourself, for even ducks are drunk on the spring windblown.

Sci-fi Poem (after Franny Choi)

Dystopia of red-fleshed dragon fruit;  

Dystopia of dark spots on the screen;  

Dystopia of hay fever sufferers;  

Dystopia of a wrist sprained for half a year;  

Dystopia of dust seeping in even with doors and windows closed;  

Dystopia of dish soap; dystopia of toilet cleaner; dystopia of disinfectant;

Dystopia of street interviews Please share your thoughts on sustainability;

Dystopia of minimalism; dystopia of maximalism;

Dystopia of looping music;  

Dystopia of no friendships to return to;

Dystopia of anxious fainting and sleepless nights;  

Dystopia of comforting yourself that you’ll fall asleep in 30 minutes;  

Dystopia of daily calls with someone you don’t love;  

Dystopia of hating everyone equally;

Dystopia of hatred imitated from others;  

Dystopia of everyone’s heart being the same;  

Dystopia of paying €0.5 to use the bathroom;  

Dystopia of excess Viagra in groundwater;  

Dystopia of artists needing ADHD pills;

Dystopia of paying tuition you’ll never earn back for an MFA;

Dystopia of donating your money to Renzo Martens Enjoy Your Poverty;

Dystopia of celebrating different colors; dystopia of color-blindness;  

Dystopia of not trusting compatriots; dystopia of not trusting foreigners;

Dystopia of replacing sugar with honey for naturalness, then using fake honey made from

sugar to save the bees;  

Dystopia of bees buried in paint in a wall;

Dystopia of hiring black security guards to manage black people;

Dystopia of installing surveillance in the men’s restroom at Rotterdam Central Station;  

Dystopia of registering everyone’s names on entry;  

Dystopia of graduating to become a dystopian alumnus, Successfully;  

Dystopia of alumni recruiting the next cohort;

Dystopia of pressing your thumb here to forget your history;

Dystopia will alter your memories and dreams;

nostalgia turns into untimely death;

something must have been lost, so don’t live

in numbness any longer;

Dystopia won’t kill you outright but will lock you in a cycle of infinite boredom –

overeating, fasting –

like a teenager’s endless loop;

the reel spins until the screen becomes an unbroken white;

there must be another place foretold

at the bottom of the coffee cup;

not a utopia; please;

no more of these despairing, artificial words;

Don’t give up;

keep stirring with your hand;

like a mole’s nose;

maybe it will return.

Hay Fever

Sometimes we leave ourselves, sometimes

for others to witness.

I’m doing nothing somewhere else

when you’re looking for me, earbuds

playing “Obviously” & “Promises of Before.”

The latter is a teenage girls’ harmony, singing

of doves and hope, a twin of “A Maiden’s

Prayer.” Such predictable pop songs – I used to

scoff.

But here on this day when the trains run

on time, some people don’t want to

be themselves.

White Cane Sugar

He grew up in the sweetest and crispiest sugarcane fields. When the cleanest juice in this fruit was sucked out, only the coarsest fibers remained, which was still far from enough to make him gain weight. Walking in the sugarcane field, he often heard a cracking sound; he could not tell whether it was his bones breaking or not, nor did he know if there were any sweeter fruits in the outside world. He only understood that making mistakes would result in being whipped with a cane by his odd father, who only talked about those constantly changing clouds and the I Ching. Yet, he was not aware that a Spanish document would alter his life. Unable to find water down there and unable to take root, his body gradually dried up, lightened, and drifted upward and outward. The Emerald Isle of the Caribbean refracted a more enchanting and delicate green than his homeland. That shade of green seemed to ooze the most healing nectar forever. He inhaled the ashes of the dead from the other side every moment, carrying histories large and small, too minute to ever be noticed.

After being at sea in a coma for five days and nights, he forgot his name. She named him Wu Zi: without words. He had never learned to write. Their grief soon spawned love, only to be as fragile as this sugarcane, too brittle to be fashioned into a pen for writing. Sometimes, as she sharpened her sickle and admired the perfect, flawless arc that the sickle traced in the air, the man would repeatedly and persistently nudge her, filled with unspoken desires, until she unreasonably pushed him away. Yet, these silent pleas held their own weight, that no one could understand. They were never told if the ground beneath their feet was enchanted, but changes had already begun: their skin had at one time become tender and scarred, but then it toughened, turning into a resilient sheath that cracked and evolved into sugarcane fibers. They were never aware that the other end of the factory was mountains of snow-white sugar. They could see it, only it was so dazzlingly white under the sun that no one dared to glance at it. Pure white crystals, unseen by them. Nor had they ever imagined it.

She picked a fruit coated in mud, wiped off the black soil, took a bite, and handed it to him. He looked at the fiery red fruit and showed a rare smile, but didn’t expect that she would disappear the next day, as swiftly as the ever-changing pure white clouds. Her limbs were exhausted from the attempt to escape, transforming into the lightest white frost on the sugarcane peel, which drifted into his dream when the wind blew. In his dream, he turned into a sugarcane growing infinitely upwards, strained to stretch out in search of her traces. Sugarcane – the living monument of their suffering – berated himself and her, just like he had berated his father, because everything seemed to have no endings. The sky that night was terrifyingly black and red, burned as if it were hell. Where he ultimately went, I have not heard. Later on, I came to understand that sugarcane is not green, but is instead permeated with purple bruises all over. But as anyone who’s ever eaten sugarcane knows, sometimes it seeps red in the innermost part – not a sign of ripeness, but a warning not to eat.

Furcifer Labordi

Furcifer Labordi, a chameleon where females change colour rapidly during egg-laying and die afterwards.

For so many years, she never again mentioned her wish to see the Northern Lights. Though for most people, seeing them in their lifetime is an unattainable dream, as a default phone wallpaper, they hardly catch anyone’s attention anymore, just like how no one believes mood rings can truly change colors with your feelings. The cellphone abandoned on the table looped the same TikTok video 27 times over. The LED lights of dinner-time bore down in a dazzling assault, day after day casting shadows on the tabletop as long and monotonous as lies. Her gaze swept over every scratch on the wooden table, cramming the food into her mouth to prevent honesty from leaving one more scar. Though they still lived together, she knew of his new lover, a style of her from seven years ago. Every few months, they made love awkwardly and without emotion, at her insistence, though sometimes she felt sickened. Why did she persist? In her final act, the furcifer labordi in the throes of spawning burst into color like fireworks, as if in the wrong developer, long-absent memories and emotions suddenly and chaotically resurrected from a hurried and confused revival in a forgotten old film. When the masochist finally bursts her own blister, it is as if prying open a corner of an ancient, rotting cabin: she watched as the popping candy shattered the damp gray bricks, like a dog bitten, madly biting back in turn; beneath her feet, the roller skates unintentionally slipped and twirled, blades screeching across the metal surface to spark fire. The black ink dissolved, she came to a consciousness of its impending demise. In the half-space of a life flashing before her eyes, objects of various shapes and forms swirled: two rotting hearts tucked away in the back of a refrigerator, divination symbols obscured by the remnants of coffee in a cup, a pair of summer sandals cloaked in frost, a glowing purple cactus, insects slain by the sharp scent of air freshener.

Reincarnation (after Arthur Sze)

Delete my name from the death register;

“You are the spy!”;

he sorts out thoughts,

the car can’t move in the mist, but hearing a tiger’s roar;

the sun sinks into the bottom of the sea;

basil on the windowsill still sprouts;

fragrance teases by her nose;

complete detachment is impossible;

tears melting into the sheets;

snapping my fingers lightly:

do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si~do

Inkstone

The poet pours in water, grinds the inkstone,

It seeps into the frosty voice of his homeland,

responding with a tedious, revealing, and clear tone,

until the eclipsing blood becomes darker than itself.

Chilling mists rise to obscure the mountain peaks.

The thing I come for:

the inkstone and not the story of the inkstone.

Notes

1. “White Cane Sugar” draws inspiration from the history of Chinese laborers in 19th century Cuba, then a Spanish colony, who were enslaved to work on sugar cane plantations. Their bone charcoal was used to bleach the cane sugar into white.