I’m taking an inventory;
Recording every
Shade and hollow,
Hummock and ripple,
Ridge and curve.

I’m exploring your territory
Of desire, each
Sigh and gasp,
Goosebump and tremor,
Touch and clench.

So if I ever need to, I can
Make a map
From memory.

Sally Dellow

April in Sai-Kung.

Pitch black
in the narrow plaza

Candlelights
flickering dimly
on the tables out at
the sidewalk cafes

Slowing the night

A Paris night off the back
of Sai-Kung’s main street

Silver moon over San Francisco Bay
at the crest of springtime

Cherry blossoms at sunset
in a Kyoto park

Vancouver by the waterfront

All those sentimental places
came to me
at the same time

Across the table
your fingers stroking
a cup of tea lovingly
I caught

Will you dance with me
under the moonlight
at Penny’s Bay?

We’ll get our ourselves lost
in the sound of the waves
by the smell of the sea

Let the warm fingers
of the damp sultry air
caress your face

Put your hair down

Slip off your shoes

You and I will tango
across the wet dancing floor
swing to the music
from a singing sea

Nothing will be left behind
in the morning
not even our footprints
but our tender memories
of this place once was

Before old Penny’s Bay

I.
Today, I had an interview in Central with a man
who had survived the Great Famine. When the
famine began he was only ten, yet he remembered
a great deal: people ate things only skinny pigs
would eat; people were ‘expressionless’, in several
senses of the word; many died of hunger—still,
there wasn’t a tear shed; and many more
were stuffed with elaborate lies or
unfounded knowledge from the Party:
steel could be made by burning impure metals,
sparrows were evil, Mao Zedong

Long before the event
Two parties agreed
The structure in place
Must not be altered

(Contractual terms
Try to fix what in time
Time changes anyway)

This frenetic dynamo of a place
Protean as ever
Stretching this way and that
In multiple dimensions___
Who is to say
This dense matter of a beast
Would not stretch the next ten
To sixty or more
Or reduce forty
To a mere twenty
Or less?

Louise Ho