Xing Zhao is a writer and translator. He has written about contemporary art, culture, design, travel, and LGBTQ for publications including Architectural Digest, The Art Newspaper, Time Out, and OutThere. He is interested in ideas such as memory, exile, elsewhere, and displacement. He lives in Shanghai — a city that is not his home and writes in English — a language other than his native tongue. He is working on a collection of short stories and a long story, both with sentiments that permeate his poetry.
I Smell Him
I smell him
on me,
on the blue-black corduroy jacket
I’m wearing,
in the back of the closet where it’s hiding.
His smell stays with me
as though he was sitting next to me,
eyes
behind his thick black-framed glasses
a quiet gleam,
lips fluttering
are wings of a butterfly
dancing in a rainforest of luminous green.
What is he thinking? I think,
his mind is a storming sea,
drawer inside drawer
insider drawer
to which I do not have a key.
Mandalorian, Skywalker, and Jedi,
KAWS, The North Face, and Noguchi.
Words pour out of him and
I feel dizzy.
I wish
he’d stop speaking.
Does he know
I’m not at all listening?
The jacket
is the color of night
where blue enters black
and black becomes blue,
nocturnal animals sing songs,
rivers run across fields.
Lingers the smell of him,
of green moss grown on spruce
the morning after rain,
of ink smudged
on fingers,
of bergamot
blent into black tea,
of tobacco and stubble,
of him sitting at the bar of the coffee shop
when the barista says,
“He looks so clean.”
I want to know
if he knows
that he smells of rain,
of spring,
of a white T-shirt
billowing on a line in the wind,
of arms wrapped around my back
squeezing so tight
I hear a crackle in my spine.
In his jacket,
do I smell of him?
knowing his knows,
thinking his thoughts,
feeling how he feels,
when he’s sitting across the table,
our legs so close
they are almost touching,
when I lean over his shoulder and
pick up the book he’s reading,
when we walk side by side
to the park,
coffee in hand,
the sun is gold,
when he so casually hands me his jacket
the color of night,
the scent of fire,
and says,
“Yours it is.”
~
Green Island
My eyes are full of blue,
my heart is full of blue,
in this seaside town where
sky is made of glass and
waters are turquoise,
people cool as sea breeze.
You beam your twinkly eyes
in this dazzling midday sun,
I have springs to my steps
looking for my coconut drinks.
You say, “This is like Europe,” and
I say, “It is Malaya.”
On this island of green,
palms idly swing.