Hannah Lund is a working writer and translator based in Shanghai. Her work has appeared in The Shanghai Literary Review, Sixth Tone, Narrative Magazine, and several China-based outlets. She co-founded a Hangzhou-based writer’s association in 2016 and has a master’s degree in Comparative Literature from Zhejiang University. Her website is: hannahlund.com.
The Thinker (Spring Festival 2019)
The dime-store sales on its shelves,
untouched, un-eared with
thumbprinted love, are
left pressed against indifferent glass
by remembered, approved faces,
the Brave New Worlds and Jane Eyres
like eager concierges asking you to stay,
knowing you won’t.
They fully-lidded leer
at the bustling tables and charging ports
the soft, deliberate jazz
cloaking the dust with dance
and the quick click of proof
that here, perhaps, there is
something to say.
It’s hard to think
when restless feet clip the breeze
and the plastic cover of Brave New World strips
to the Styrofoam underneath.
What’s new will age,
but not as well as what we see when it’s almost gone.
“The Thinker” is not open for business today.
Its doors are locked,
display cases tinted in shadow,
sunlight specters spiraling to the floor.
But the world shall be forever lovely — it must!
we need only glance at it through the window,
slanted, silent.