Felix Rian Constantinescu was born in Romania in 1982. He made his debut in 2002 as a writer of short pieces for theatre, and his published works include  Imersiune posibila – Possible Immersion (2004), Canon in d si alb – trei povestiri (2011), O mama de lumina (2015), Momentul in care D-zeu exista (2015) and Yin (2016).

*

Jos în grădină

E zăpadă mucedă.

Soare – bec aprins.

Down in the garden

There is moulded snow.

Sun – fiery bulb.

*

Prin haturi albe

Felinare aruncă

Nuanţe nocturne.

Through white baulks

Street lamps throw

Nightshades.

*

Pătrar de Lună

Peste tren înzăpezit.

Afânat deşert.

Moonquarter

Over snowed up train.

Beaked up desert.

*

Pe scaunul pătat

Becul plouă alb-gălbui.

Iarnă sub astre.

On the stained chair

The bulb rains yellow-white.

Winter under stars.

*

Porţelan negru

Unde, ceaiul fumegă

La miezul nopţii.

Black porcelain

Waves, the tea smokes

At midnight.

*

Aici în Haţeg

Blocurile sunt dune

În neagra beznă.

Here in Haţeg

The blocks of flats are dunes

In the black darkness.

*

Falduri lichide

Recif sticlos palpitând.

Solare lumini.

Liquid kerchiefs

Glassy reef throbbing.

Solar lights.

*

În pervaz, în geam

Picură rotogoale.

Ochiuri albastre.

In the frame, in the window

Rolls drip.

Blue water eyes.

*

Îngheţatul geam

Salcâmul umed şi alb.

Palidă iarnă.

The frozen window

The damp and white acacia.

Pale winter.

*

Lângă fereastră

Salcâmul se înălbi

De dimineaţă.

Near the window

The acacia has been whitened

Of morning.

*

Pe ceru-n amurg

Prunii, negru filigran.

Aer limpede.

On the sky at dusk

The plum trees, black filigree.

Transparent air.

*

Prin crengi albăstrii

Reci ceţuri electrice.

Sfârşit de iarnă.

Through blue branches

Cold electric mist.

End of winter.

*

Înnegrit salcâm

Azur vitraliu, amurg.

Busuioc uscat.

In blackened acacia

Blue stained-glass, dusk.

Withered basil.

*

Pe o creangă albă

Un sticlete ţopăie.

Frig fosforescent.

On the white branch

A thistlefinch hops.

Phosphorescent cold.

*

În pervazul ud

Firimituri pentru vrăbii.

Picură ţurţuri.

On the wet window frame

Crumbs for sparrows.

Icicles drip.

*

Peste sat ninsă

Noapte – pată sepia.

Fulgi de hârtie.

Over the village snowed

Night – cuttle fish stain.

Flakes of paper.

*

Stradă pustie

Câteva geamuri licăr.

Noapte geroasă.

Desert street

A few windows sparkle.

Frosty night.

*

În apartament

Frig conturat limpede.

Umbră de pin nins.

In the flat

Clearly outlined cold.

Snowed pine shadow.

*

Înroşind burgul

Găuriţi monoliţi dalbi

Luminoşi în frig.

(haiku în amintirea Revoluţiei din Decembrie 1989)

Red colouring the city

Pierced white monolithes

Bright in cold.

(haiku in the memory of the Revolution of December 1989)

Lillian (Quan) Zhou is a student at Beijing No. 4 High School. She began learning English at a young age, and has a passion for prose.

Once More Back Home

I spent nine years – my childhood years – with my grandmother in an old Chinese house in the countryside. I developed a deep-seated aversion to caterpillars from their ubiquitous presence, and had to wear long-sleeved shirts in the garden, since my grandmother hated using pesticides on her organic herbs and naturally nourished sakura trees. But apart from that, my grandma’s house and the countryside became my idea of heaven. From then on, I never thought there was any place in the world like that tranquil haven. Those years and my childhood were exquisite. My memory is filled with tender chartreuse springs, fiery cerulean summers, autumns with a mixture of amber and crimson hues, and frosted winters with a pleasant smell of home-made cherry pie. I have since become a city dweller, but sometimes there are days when the restlessness of urban traffic, the gnaw of loneliness, and the incessant crowds make me wish for the peace of the countryside. Two months ago, this feeling grew so strong that I bought myself a long-sleeved shirt and returned to my grandmother’s house for a week’s rest away from the urban heat, planning to revisit my old haunts.

On the journey back to that familiar landscape, I began to wonder what it would be like. I wondered how time would have marred this unique and almost sacred spot — the blossoms and the forests, the woods that the sun set into, the quaint house and yard in front of it. It’s strange how vividly you can recall a usually blurred piece of memory like that, once you allow your mind to return into the groove that led back to that countryside, back home. You recall one scene, and it suddenly immerses you into another one. I guess what I remembered most clearly were the cozy middays, when the sun was casting its leisurely heat and light; I remembered how Grandma’s cherry pie smelled of the blossoms it once took the shape of, and of the mellow wheat whose scent permeates through the field a mile away from the house.

My memories are just as lively as the actuality: again, I was exposed to that pleasantly warm sunshine as my senses captured a wonderful and familiar mixture of smells. As I settled into the house (the dusting kept me busy for a while) and the kind of tranquility I had known, I could tell that it was going to be pretty much the same as it had been before — I knew it, smearing oil on the fissured wooden pillars, sleeping until middays on weekends, and inhaling the satisfyingly blended aromas of the field and home-made pastries from the neighborhood. I began to sustain the illusion that no time has passed, and thus that I was the nine-year-old me. I would be in the middle of a simple act – wandering in the field of mingled green and yellow, or deliberating over whether to have salmon and beef for lunch – and suddenly it would not be me but a carefree child who was making these gestures, saying these words. It was not an entirely new feeling, but it grew much stronger and more compelling during this visit, after six years away. I seemed to be living backwards through time.

On the second day, I went to the sakura forest, my weariness having ebbed after the first day’s midday nap. A faint but familiar sense of melancholy fell upon me as I trod lightly on the moist earth, which was covered in a pale-pink veil woven from fallen petals. An early, rose-toned light shed on the maroon twigs. I saw a butterfly alight on one of them after hovering a few inches above me. It was the arrival of this creature that convinced me beyond any doubt that everything was as it always had been. The years were only a mirage; there had been no years. The flowers were just the same, blooming fully under beams of golden sunshine, petals drifting to the ground as a breeze ruffled the leaves. The sun was the sun from six years ago, coloring the trees with the same gradation of muted shades that move from pink to rose to scarlet and to a glistening gold. I stared silently at the tip of the twig, at the butterfly that had seemingly traveled six years to approach me. I deliberately made the branch quiver, dislodging the butterfly. It flitted five inches away, paused, flitted five inches back, and came to rest again on another twig a little farther above. There had been no years between this butterfly and the other one — the one that was part of my memory.

The countryside, the summertime, the indelible pattern of life, the fade-proof woods, the ineffaceable house, the meadow of four-leaf clovers and daisies forever and ever, summer without end; this was the life away from the coiled urban mess. It seemed to me, as I remembered all this, that those times had been infinitely precious and worth saving. There had been jollity, calm, and goodness.

The ride to shuttle back and forth through the field had been big business in itself: on the bumpy paths my bike tires crunched the gravel, sometimes with a hollow rush of wind generated by a thrilled acceleration. I would catch the first glimpse of smiling neighbors from the other cottages, and at the end of the last long street, the first view of Grandma’s house, reaping the assuring feeling of home after an exhausting day. Sometimes, in a hurry, I would cross the field, prickly crops making the skin around my ankles itch, and speed up to form a blurred profile when an angry farmer tried to recognize the mischievous saboteur. Traveling is far less exciting nowadays. You get into your car and let GPS choose one of the flattest cement roads. You intentionally seek a smile from a neighbor through the car window. In ten minutes, the trip through the field would be over with no fuss. No itchy, thrilling, wonderful fuss.

Happiness and goodness and calm . The only thing that was wrong now, really, was the sound – an unfamiliar nervous sound from the shopping mall . This was the note that jarred, the one thing that would sometimes break the illusion and set the years moving. Among the extensive stretch of farmlands and scattered cottages, the mall had previously been a market – the only place where crowds had gathered. In the old days, it had been busy in a cordial way. The noise of hawkers bargaining with buyers was a comfort, an ingredient of countryside gusto. The fun part about wandering through the market was the conversations. There were polite reciprocations and rowdy squabbles. Some were appraisals of summer clothing between housewives, and some were vendors’ concessions to a ten cent discount, but they all cast a comforting and intriguing sound across the landscape. Plastic bags rustled and swished, and footsteps pattered and pattered. That was a heartening sound as well. But now, the crowded market had been transformed into a modern shopping mall. The sounds of peddlers selling home-grown vegetables and craftsmen showing off their wares were overwhelmed by the stiffly sweet sound of welcome from the trained salesgirls. After years of faking this affected, urban style, I loathed its bourgeois overtones. Other teenage girls loved the mall, and coveted the outfits on display. They soon learned the trick of befriending the salesgirls, who would let them wear expensive skin-tight sundresses for a day. Watching them, I remembered the things you could do in the old crowded market, where a pleasant chat could be everything. I remembered how you could grow attached to a place if you got really close to the heart of it. Old-style markets in those days didn’t attract stylish young consumers. They sold basic necessities and fresh food, not high-end commodities associated with fads and fashions. However, frequent visitors to the market were captivated its charms. You could have frequent interactions with neighboring cottagers, or with tired travelers who always carried a heap of weirdly compelling stories in their dusty backpacks. Sometimes you would be lucky enough to spot a workshop selling the sort of fine, hand-made gadgets that my grandmother loved. In the early morning the market was always quiet. Swept by a refreshing breeze , it was difficult not to slow down and stop worrying about trivial things.

Now, listening to the canned pop music in the shopping mall, for a moment I missed the market terribly – the hawkers, the shoppers, the backpackers and its crowded serenity. It gave me a menacing feeling.

I had a good week in the countryside. The flowers smelled sweet and the sun shone endlessly, day after day. When I grew tired at night, I would lie down in the heat of the little bedroom after a long hot day. The breeze would stir almost imperceptibly outside, the smell of the field and swamp drifting in through the open windows. Sleep would come easily, and in the morning a mockingbird would be on the windowsill, tapping out his morning routine. Lying in bed until midday, I sorted through my memories— the pink bicycle with a wicker front basket woven by my grandmother, and how proudly I rode it in front of other girls. The older boys playing their guitars and the girls watching them as we sat around a bonfire, and how sweet the music was across the field under shining moonlight. What it had felt like to ride a bright pink bike and let the breeze waft the faint smell of my perfume to the boys. After lunch I would quietly explore the streams running by the fields, where groups of tadpoles quickly spread out in all directions when they detected minor man-made tremors. I wanted to see a turtle and pretend it was the one that my grandma let go years ago, after a boy gave it to me as a gift. Everywhere I went I had trouble telling whether those years had genuinely passed, or whether I was still the unworldly girl who spent hours waiting for a turtle.

One afternoon while I was watering the cherry trees a postman arrived. It was like the revival of an old tradition that I had seen long ago with childish delight. My first instinct was to run to the gate and greet the smiling middle-aged man. This was a daily necessity, and is still a daily necessity. The whole thing was so familiar: the first feeling of curiosity for news, the excitement to hear fresh countryside anecdotes, and the one moment among all tranquilities that is close to drama. I heard him stuffing newspapers and mail through the crack of the door.

When I opened the gate the postman couldn’t hide his astonishment at encountering a girl in an old abandoned house. A letter in his right hand, he stood still for five full seconds. Then he greeted me in a warm, professional tone, and I took the mail from him. Wincing slightly, I watched his figure disappear over the horizon, and suddenly my heart began to ache. It ached from the sudden collapse of my illusion – the sudden recollection of my grandmother’s death six years before.

Habib Mohana was born in 1969 in Daraban Kalan, a town in the district of Dera Imsail Khan, Pakistan. He is an assistant professor of English at Government Degree College No 3, D. I. Khan. He writes fiction in English, Urdu, and Saraiki (his mother tongue). He has four books under his belt, one in Urdu and three in Saraiki. His Saraiki novel forms part of the syllabus for the MA in Saraiki at Zikria University Multan. His short stories in English have appeared in literary journals in India and Canada. In 2010 and 2014, his Saraiki books won the Khawaja Ghulam Farid Award from the Pakistan Academy of Letters. His book of short stories in Urdu, titled Adhori Neend, won the Abaseen award from the Government of KPK. He is currently seeking a publisher for his novel The Village Café.

            The Village Court

Ikram sold cosmetics and items for women and children. He travelled on his brakeless Sohrab bicycle through the scattered villages on Damaan, peddling his wares. The itinerant hawker was a well-known figure in the village of Kot Lalu. Upon his arrival into the village he would blow his rusty whistle beguilingly, and women, girls, and children would gravitate towards him like rats of Hamelin. His weathered bicycle groaned under his wares. Only its saddle and pedals were visible. The rest of the bicycle was buried under cartons, baskets, and bundles that housed lipsticks, creams, perfumes, hairclips, face powders, glass bangles, fake jewelry, looking glasses, toys, and toffees. Only Ikram had the knack of riding or wheeling a bicycle so chaotically laden with goods.

The chatty hawker was a cheerful, decent man. He would exchange gossip and news with his female customers, cracking jokes with them and asking them about their kids and their lives. He ran tabs for ladies who were strapped for cash. Sometimes the women paid him in eggs, wheat, or butter oil. If Ikram was thirsty he asked the women for water, and if he was hungry he asked them for bread. His female customers obliged graciously.

Seldom did the village men buy anything from the hawker. They held a very low opinion of him. In their view, he was a crafty and clever creature who made his living by preying upon the imaginations of ignorant village women, and tricking them into buying his substandard trinkets. The village men considered Ikram effeminate and weak, as he shunned manly professions like farming or herding or wood-chopping. Some men would shoo him away from their doors so that he wouldn’t be able to entice their women and children into buying his third-rate stuff. But the women folk always held him in high esteem. For them he was a huge source of modern trends in fashion and news from the outside world. He gave the village women useful beauty tips and offered them advice about their children’s health. He had once lived and worked in Karachi, and he told the women breathtaking stories of the city with its sky-hugging buildings, and the fashionable ladies that walk in high heels in busy markets. For the illiterate village housewives whose horizons were limited, the hawker was an entertainer, educator, and trendsetter.

His arrival into the village was always keenly awaited, especially before festive occasions like Big and Small Eid.

Although the forty-year-old wheat-colored hawker hailed from a village, his clothes were relatively well-stitched and cleaner than the clothes of other villagers. His lustrous eyes were always lined with kohl; his well-oiled, raven hair was done in the style of film actors’, and his clothes exuded a heady fragrance of attar. He was a short man, and inwardly he seemed painfully aware of it, but God had compensated him in another way—he was blessed with a long aristocratic nose. He had been married for ten years and had sired four children.

It was whispered among the womenfolk of Kot Lalu that the hawker was having an affair with the potter’s wife who had borne three children. They said that Ikram spent more time at his beloved’s door, and gave her cosmetics and knick-knacks either for free or at an insanely low price.

Mid-June’s punishing sun was in the middle of the sky and the village streets lay deserted. The villagers had confined themselves to their homes or thatched sheds that were erected in the orchards. A farmer, who had searched every nook and cranny of the village for his lost donkey, found himself at the village graveyard. The fenceless cemetery sprawled over a huge area. He was scanning it for his lost donkey when he saw a reflection of something from a clump of trees. Goaded by curiosity, the farmer pushed on through the tangle of vegetation and young acacias towards the source of the reflection. It was coming from a looking glass that was suspended from the handlebar of the hawker’s Sohrab bicycle, which was propped up against a gnarly tree in the middle of the graveyard. Then he heard whispering from a nearby clump of toothbrush trees. He tiptoed to the clump, parted the lacy branches, and saw the hawker and the potter’s wife engaged in an amorous tête-à-tête.

The peeping Tom hurried to his friends who were playing cards under the thatched shed in the village community centre. He told them what he had witnessed in the cemetery. A posse of ten men rushed to the scene and crept into the clump of toothbrush trees, catching the besotted pair in the act. Ikram and his lover scrambled to their feet and made a dash towards the exit point, but the glowering men had blocked all routes of escape. Gibbering like a monkey, the hawker went down on bended knees and beseeched the men to forgive him. Weeping, the woman threw her head scarf at the men’s feet and begged them to let her go, but they wouldn’t listen to their pleas.

‘Have you no respect for the deceased? Weren’t you ashamed for the dead who are buried here? You call yourself Muslim? Even a Kafir would not dare to do such a filthy thing in the graveyard.’ The first villager gave the hawker a stinging clout across the face.

‘Blacken their faces with soot, seat them on a donkey, and give them a tour of the village,’ the second man screamed.

‘Hang garlands of old broken shoes around their sinful necks,’ the third man thundered.

‘Take the adulterous couple to the mullah. He shall decide it according to sharia.’ The fourth man stamped his foot.

The hawker’s mistress slumped to the ground and started writhing in the dust like a crushed bug. The men let her go, but captured her lover. First they thrashed him brutally, then tied his hands behind his back with his shoulder sheet and dragged him to the village community centre.

The news that the hawker and the potter’s wife were found in a compromising position spread through Kot Lalu like wildfire. The male villagers converged upon the community centre. The offender was tied to the leg of a charpoy. Tears were rolling down his cheeks; saliva was drooling from his mouth, and his hair was awry. Every newcomer gave him two or three spicy slaps in the face or hot kicks to his side. Some made shaming gestures at him, and others spat at him. One man brought a platter full of fresh cow dung and dumped it over the hawker’s head.

‘I have eaten crap! I have committed an awfully wicked thing. Please pardon me! I will never do it again. I will never set foot in this village again,’ the hawker begged the village chief.

‘You should have thought about it before. But lust rendered you blind. This is a village of respectable people. This is not a brothel.’ The old village chief lashed him with his crooked waking stick.

Later, the village headman sent for the potter, but he had gone to the neighbouring village to sell pots, pitchers, and spouted jugs. The news had hit the nearby villages. Some men got onto their bicycles and whooshed to Kot Lalu, anticipating some action. The news reached the farmers and goatherds, and they raced towards the village to witness the drama. The community centre heaved with men and boys. To get a better view of the proceedings, several men had climbed the roofs and walls of their houses.

More than five cooking disks were brought to the scene. Those who stood close to the hawker scraped soot from the lower side of the cooking disk with their fingers and then applied the dark powder to his face. He looked like a stage character of some morality play being punished for his sins. Some laughed at him and some hurled abuse. Then from nowhere appeared garlands made out of old, broken shoes. The shoe-garlands were put around the hawker’s neck. A boy was passing by with his donkey laden with fuel wood. The spectators pushed the load off the beast’s back and dragged it into the community centre. The ringleaders made the hawker ride the creature, and it was led out into the street followed by the shouting, clapping crowd. The hawker sat hunched on the donkey. The broken shoes hung from his neck like dried gourds. They yelled abuse at the rider. Some men beat the donkey while others beat the rider. Twice he was given a tour of the village. Afterwards he was brought back to the community centre in a pathetic condition.

The congregants offered opinions as to what sort of punishment Ikram deserved. Some said that the case should be reported to the police; some suggested that his throat be slit, while others maintained that his nose should be chopped off. After a while, the village court agreed upon the last punishment. Now the question was, who would cut off the hawker’s nose? The ringleaders sent for the barber but he had gone to a nearby village to perform circumcision on a child. Instead, they sent another man to the barber’s house to ask his wife to lend them a razor, but she replied that her husband had taken all his tools with him. The ringleaders looked at one another.

Rolling up his sleeves, a middle-aged goatherd stepped forward. He pulled out a small, tough knife from his pocket. The ringleaders pinioned the culprit, who bleated like a goat. Unhurriedly, the goatherd touched the hawker’s nose on each side. He thought for a while, and then positioned the shiny blade on the nasal bridge and pressed. In a flash, the nose had been sliced off neatly. The amputator held it, dripping with blood, between his thumb and forefinger and showed it to the crowd. The throng let out a thundering roar of moral triumph. The amateur surgeon placed the nose in an upright position on his callused left palm. It looked like a frog on the verge of taking a leap. He knocked it down with the tip of his bloody knife so it lay on its side. For some moments he examined the dismembered organ, and then threw it down on the ground as if it were a malignant growth. The spectators crowded around the nose. They expected it to jump, dance, and wriggle like the hacked-off tail of a lizard, but it showed no sign of life. The villagers looked a little disappointed. The nose lay on the ground motionless, like a small pear chopped in half. One villager tentatively kicked it with the toe of his shoe. Another hurled a stone at it, and yet another struck it with a stick. Then, a flight of stones, clods, sticks, and brickbats landed on the nose until it was buried under a heap of assorted missiles.

The onlookers had lost interest in the owner of the nose, who was screaming in excruciating pain. A small fountain of blood was bubbling from the place where once had stood a long, proud, aristocratic nose. It ran into the hawker’s mouth, spilling over his chin and then down his neck, painting his shirt crimson red.

The disoriented, noseless hawker lurched to his feet. He placed his shoulder sheet on the bleeding stump and stumbled towards the exit. No one stopped him leaving.

‘Where are you going?’ someone remarked. ‘Will you not take your snout with you? Gentlemen, give him back his nose. After all, it’s his property.’ Mad laughter erupted from the crowd.

‘No, we won’t do that,’ the village chief said. ‘We should feed it to the dogs.’

‘No –’ the amputator replied. ‘Even dogs wouldn’t eat the nose of an adulterer.’

Vaughn M. Watson is a New York-based fiction and non-fiction writer who lived in China for two years. He has appeared on NPR and has work forthcoming in Tahoma Literary Review. He was the winner of the 2016 Winston-Salem Writer’s Flying South competition and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He is currently working on a collection of stories and essays, Payaos, and serving on the Newtown Literary editorial board.

The Brightest Light It Will Ever Know

They are beautiful at first, their wings adorned with symmetrical patterns. They are browns, golds, and reds, always dark and earthy colors that contrast the green of local flora and the blue Yunnan sky. Their wings are camouflaged in the red dirt roads that connect this town to the city. This does not matter; however, as more often than not one sees them in rooms, reflected on the cold stone floors or perched on walls painted in layers of beige. The moths hang from the walls patterned and colored, their wings spread flat against the wall, two-dimensional as paper.

They come in through the windows and always at night. Their entrances are made of glass and metal, painted a red, Martian rust. A section of it, one that can slide, is left open to let wet air into the room. They come in on their second or third attempts. As if propelled by winds, the moths enter the room and settle on a resting place. They move once or twice, shifting around as things do in an effort to prepare for a resting state. In the case of the moth, this state is called torpor, and if the moth survives the night, it may remain on the wall or the stone floor in that state for the daylight hours. Its resting state mirrors that of humans, but entomologists say they are more aware than humans are when sleeping. They are resting but aware, able to return to their nocturnal state at the slightest change in stimulus.

When night falls, a moth comes alive. It is decorated with colors of the earthy, dark shades of brown and black and brass. Its wings and the lines on them curl like brackets, perfectly even on both halves. It is on the western wall, the emptiest one. Of the four walls, this one is painted the best. Most of the it has been painted using the same shade of white, but there are patches that have been painted over in a slightly darker beige. The room smells of smoke.

The moth lands on one of these patches, near the upper left corner, as if able to discern this difference in color. Its wings flap twice and then rest flat, revealing their naked detail. Hanging from the ceiling’s center is a string and a makeshift light fixture. A light-emitting diode (LED) light bulb is screwed into the fixture. The light is off now, but the sun will set soon.

At night, the windows should be closed to prevent the moths from clamoring in to experience the siren of fluorescent light. The mountain nights get cold and after the sun disappears behind the clouds and myriad peaks, one begins to feel the effects of altitude. With the doors and windows closed, the room is a comfortable temperature, just slightly cooler than that of a room at sea level, because stone lacks insulating properties.

The light goes on and the bracket moth is aware of this. It is still in torpor, resting but conscious. It considers movement, its wings aflutter, but the moth’s interaction with the light is troubling. Instead of flying directly into the light, a moth to metaphorical flame, it begins a choreography.

Moths are positively phototactic. They are attracted to light, counterintuitive to their nocturnal nature. Entomologists theorize that they are so attracted because they use the moon, the brightest known light to them, as a compass. The invention of light, the use of fire and electricity, has confused them. The brightest lights have now become closer than ever before, and the moths have confounded these lights with the light of the moon. They approach the brightest lights, thinking they will carry them to safer places. It is their nature; it is their tragedy.

Now the moth is dancing, circling the brightest light it will ever know. After several rotations, the moth winds around the bulb with sickening speed, always getting closer and closer. It is pulled into the light it believes has guided it for most of its short life. It is pure instinct; it is their romance.

The moth is closing in on the light and beginning to touch it for the first time. It circles and touches, then it only touches, knocking into the light with all its might, the path to the heavens. It knocks and knocks, but then it knocks a final time and retreats to the wall. The moths in Yunnan are large and do not die so easily. Instead, it goes into shock, experiencing the singeing of its insect flesh for the first time. It rests, a brief torpor, then convulses, flying to each corner of the room, taking off as abruptly as it lands. The wings are still for seconds, resting on the stone floor. It convulses again, moving three-quarters of an inch at a time but somehow managing to fly.

When it is certain that the moth is dead, it is swept into a metal dustpan and left outside to rot. But for tonight, it will remain on the coldness of that uncovered and dusty section of the stone floor, not in torpor but in death.

The room is silent without the fluttering of its wings and its constant crashing into the furniture. It sounds empty and the light goes off. A fainter light goes on beneath the covers.

From the front window a sound can be heard. It is like human knocking. The room is quiet all except for that drumming. The moths are knocking against the doors and the windows. They are knocking with all their might.

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.

Electric Brain (电脑)

I awake to the screen bleeding its cerebral current,

its ones and zeroes stitching the lobes,

lunging like lightning kisses,

livid flicks of lethargy.

The static doesn’t sting as much as the night

when the world refracts,

its eyes underlined, slugged by insomnia —

that hollow thud resuscitating it

when there’s nothing to see, but always something on

waking as if drowning

when the lights go out.

The bite and the hiss of its snicker

and the cool slide of its tongue

as it whispers, “Stay”

is a sticky, shivering web pulsing along my spine.

Its warmth is like a curtain, a blink

and then a field of endless lightning

pummeling the earth to keep it aflame.

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.