Lover-
here-lover-now is tattooed
in luminous ink on the thinnest
skin of my chest, so no one worry:
This is one we’re both in.

Can taste today on her tongue
the vodka-dipped mouth she could have,
really should have, but never managed to
kiss into oblivion so those black
cherry lips bleed their wetness
over her chin, onto her chest, past
her thin, bright skin and down
into the place where dragons
might have been.

Never, there were never, dragons.

Is growing old with desire,
sometimes, but nevertheless
knows: at any age, she can stand
on the front porch bare-chested
and shine her thinskin tattoo to lovers
gone, and yet to have been, who are looking,
always, for that weekend c(o)untry home.

Today, people ask you for your signature.
Last night, you autographed her collarbone.

You should really be careful with your ink
And where it goes.
You don’t want to start any new chapters now -
Chimeras that bloom in your head
Between sleeping and waking,
And the parted curtains of her yellow hair.

You can put your mind to better use,
Than attempting to wrap it around her;
Your arms too;
Your tongue;
Your life.

The trouble with an ending is knowing
That you could have written it better.
If only someone up there would notice,
And ask for a goddamn draft.

1.

The rivers are dry
and open. There are grooves
in the skin of the earth
where the wind drove weather,
once, but now only the ghosts
of cows wander – and young
drivers speed across tar with romance
in their eye for all the rivers
that ever ran this face of earth
that I’m now swallowing with my wheels.

I wish I could wash on the banks of
any one of these giants. Dip my loving
hands beneath the skin of river
to scoop out the pulp. And drink.
I wish I was so brave as to step in
and sweep away my self to a chorus
of water gods, hordes over Jordan,
swing low, sing the name
and dissolve once, and again, into froth.

2.

The sky is heavy; and this tin can
speeding on a ribbon of black tar
crushes all its passengers. No
angelic horde will speak to you now,
not until you dig your heels in dirt
and breathe again the air that came
natural to the land. No revelation
at the water’s edge, no reprieve,

not until you dig your heels in the dirt
and find the core of bone that scaffolds
the land, find the armature of dry, open
rivers and rutted hills red and bare,
salted veins and slate edges.
Not until you level
the heap of anxious
you have horded, pat down
the collected treasures
of thirty years of arching heart
and stammering knee, dug
your angers deep into the centre

and tented it all with that purple
sky of love – not until you
bare your head to the rain
not until you loose your own veins
will the rivers fill with wet and gush
and holy holy, not until you flood,
not until you flood.

Hell begins at six and has six lanes
Damp black asphalt, slashed by hard white lines,
And crawled by insect shapes of steel and glass.
Unfeeling calculation sees them pass,
Presses the loud pedal, hearing as it whines
The engine’s harsh combustion, brutality of motion.

My hasting mind knows nothing but the goad
That striking, stinging, makes me traverse hell,
Awake too early for the driving fit.
The signs that guide, written and unwrit,
Compassionless and hopeless, daily spell
Lines of raw futility drawn into infinity.

Six lanes are parents to the grey of tenders:
Mapped out to lead to half-disguised indentures;
Bearing husks of drained humanity,
Unthinking cargoes of necessity,
Who go where they would not on bootless ventures
Through arid years that drink unshed our tears.

She mends her arresting armor,
She sculpts her striking sheath,
She fine-tunes her fetching frame.

She cannot rely on a man for everything.
Men exhibit only impaired judgment:

If life is of no immediate necessity,
There’s nothing necessarily to judge.
Men admire their judgment as perversely pleasing.

Women’s work does not end so easily.
And there’s no end to what they pass.

She lures the languid onlooker,

She appraises the shapely shoreline,

She carts the crotchety combatant.

She cannot rely on a man for anything.
Men exhibit only impractical methods:

They pretend to visualize a problem,
But their biases always cramp the solution.
Men revere their practicality as neurotically stable.

Women tailor their solutions to suit their needs.
Imagine finding enough lifetimes to finish it all.

She finishes balancing her scales,
She detaches from her daily construction,
And she appears at ease to the naked eye.

still on the outside and a beer
in her hand, she knows: Metropolis

is fine. The Riddler’s dead. All the vampires
exploded into a dustbowl and now,

she must put her underwear back
on the inside, fish out those contacts

and go grocery shopping in sensible shoes.
There is nothing else to do. It really is

such a mad cliché, but she wishes,
she wishes, someone somewhere would cry,

dangle from a building, rob Fort Knox,
implode – someone would need her

to stand tall and whip in the breeze
with the cloak and the hair and, well,

she knows: sooner or later, everyone
picks their way across the glass.

ii.
They save their best dress
Not for church, not for a dance.

They wear it when someone
in the family dies

so it’ll get some sun.

Tammy Ho Lai-ming

Tammy Ho Lai-ming is a Hong Kong-born writer currently based in London, United Kingdom. She is a founding co-editor of the first and only Hong Kong-based literary publication, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. You can find out more about the author by visiting www.sighming.com.

As on drunken nights aplenty
Since before the age of twenty;
Alcoholic cognoscenti:
Gentlemen of Bacchus.

Once our numbers swamped the tables,
Packed the snug up to the gables,
Filled the air with jokes and fables:
Gentlemen of Bacchus.

But in ones and twos and threes
Young blades fell to love’s disease;
Moved to Surrey, if you please.
Gentlemen of Bacchus.

By coup de main or escalade,
Sniper’s shot or cannonade,
Cupid drew them in his shade:
Gentlemen of Bacchus.

Just we few still gather gladly,
Sing the old songs somewhat sadly,
Drink and laugh a little madly:
Gentlemen of Bacchus.

We who, shunning home and sleep,
The rites of Dionysus keep
And laughingly refuse to weep.
Gentlemen of Bacchus.

Cheery, beery, worldly, weary,
Playing out our revels dreary,
Hair and numbers thinning yearly:
Gentlemen of Bacchus.

Sooner than we care to think,
As our numbers fade and shrink,
One alone will sit and drink:
Gentleman of Bacchus.

Shorn of satire, robbed of farce,
He’ll watch the leaden moments pass
Reflected in an empty glass:
Gentleman of Bacchus.

The water in his bleary eye
Will mutely question how and why
We let the youthful laughter die,
Gentlemen of Bacchus.