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The Night Moves

Pui Ying Wong

 

 

•THE NIGHT MOVES•

It moves
over tunnels and overpasses
swimming pools
and hospitals        It moves

with funnels of clouds
and rains like steam engines
on the parched mouth of suburb
55         and hooded stars

—over insomniacs
hissing coffee pots
slow march of ticking digits

over voices of exiles
bigots   zealots
fortune tellers and sleepwalkers

over silos and refineries
glinting
like fabled palaces

It moves
over the decrepitated town’s
shuttered cinema     inn
a nature museum
155                 Over

the narrow road to prison
a utopian farm’s
three-legged barn     relics
memories finally ownerless—

The night moves
over us too
PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREensconced
in the catacomb of sleep
in time’s fidelity

Pui Ying Wong

 

 

•THE OLD SKY•

Christophe the photographer says nothing much happens
beyond the horizon, tilt the camera 1/3 down
to the church steeple, the round village, the wall.
Human is where everything happens, even the dead
languish in the grave behind the clock tower.
Six elders banter on the ledge, almost youthful
when the camera finds them.

Pui Ying Wong

 

•LEAVING THE TALL HOUSE•

 

1.

Two steins and a small Buddha

a pasta maker, an urn,

a garden of slugs and snails,

cellar crates and letter trays.

Where I go no songs will fill my mouth,

where I go songs will fill my mouth.

 

2.

The news says meteorite

showers after midnight.

In the pond under a layer of ice

two koi circle.

I lie down, back against the stone.

Shards shatter my night.

 

3.

It’s a case of nostalgia

meeting savagery. Give them up:

the cups, the bowls, the platters.

The banquet is over and everyone’s gone.

We’ve lived long enough

in the clutter of shadows.

 

4.

The inspector will be here soon.

The sealant is tight around the trap door,

stairwell clear of cobwebs.

He will not know the times

I dreaded the basement, the dank,

the shine in the crooked light.

 

5.

All morning the radio plays. Mozart

at first, then Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

It is no one’s birthday today.

No one’s death either, the full sun is assuring.

Why then do you feel like someone

behind a wall with no ladders.

 

6.

Where I go songs will fill my mouth,

shards shatter my night.

We’ve lived long enough,

the shine in the crooked light

behind a wall with no ladders.

Let go of everything. Let nothing go.

 

 

 

Image header, "Eclipse" by Cheryl Chan. For more of Chan's work, 
see http://cherylcphoto.wixsite.com/cherylchan.



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About Pui Ying Wong

Pui Ying Wong was born in Hong Kong. She is the author of two full-length books of poetry: An Emigrant’s Winter (Glass Lyre Press, 2016) and Yellow Plum Season (New York Quarterly Books, 2010)—along with two chapbooks. She has poems published and forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, Atlanta Review, The Southampton Review, Plume Poetry Journal, The New York Times, Valparaiso Poetry Review, among others. She is a book reviewer for Cervena Barva Press in Somerville, MA. She lives in Cambridge, MA with her husband, the poet Tim Suermondt.

Filed Under: Poetry

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