10tonfunk

Patient chorus of frogs in the crisp gray morning
park not yet open to human visitors
‘Run for thousand of miles’
‘Good luck in making money bridge’
‘It is a kind of fashion and fallow foodstuff’
Trading coffee for a sword
Exchanging words, then frenzied punches
The old couple trots
     each with a bag of sweet potatoes inside their
     North Face jackets
Trying to get them back still warm
Brilliant orange flesh still steaming
Sweet
squeezed out of the charred skin
     like a popsicle
China is a country of smokers
An old man with a blow torch slips and almost topples
     off the roof of the closed concession stand
Are the two fish in the pink pail part of the set
were they meant for the director’s daily soup
     and forgotten?
are they still next to each other
nearly still
in the small pink bucket in the back room? ...read more

SARS 1019 AD
Everyone is wearing surgical masks in the plaster cave
The dusk clogs the beams from the lights
     in no hurry to move along
Blue lights reflects from cell phones onto made up faces
the glare catching the peaks of the elaborate wigs carefully glued on every morning

Someone has shown the 59-year-old director Weibo
He spends much of the day leaned back in his folding lawn chair
chuckling
adding the young crew members to his friends list
Somehow
he’s already uploaded a much younger picture of himself

He’s fascinated for several minutes when he finds a young man
     with the same name
staring at his avatar, uncharacteristically silent
It could be you from the past
Chimes the makeup girl with round white teeth

In the same set
a large two story building
is being constructed from charred logs and wood from other sets
The men work without consulting each other, or a plan
The saws whine
and sigh as they decelerate

Still in the underground compound
we doze in the trailer
with the red camping light and hindi beats
teeth clacking against sunflower seeds
clouds of conversation gently fogging the air outside

In the courtyard the light is ...read more

Bad for the actors, good for the farmers
Of flesh and fauna, mice and men
and indescribable, pinkish lunch meats

The old couple moves arm and arm down the seventy or so steps
She digs lunch out of his teeth with a toothpick
both patient
Your mom and I…

Language can be courage
Silence cowardice
And the space between two people filled with the mild buzz
of discomfort
like an errant Sichuan pepper

I think you are lucky
In the deep night I think so too
Mornings are rougher ...read more