Poetry

Refugee Shack, Kowloon

Rusty oil canisters, a torn shoe,
suds from a latrine runoff, stagnate in an
algae-slick, mud-banked gutter. Mosquitoes
swarm above the water’s paste.  

Flies clump on drainage pipes. On a   
cinder block, frogs squat. Across
the tamped dirt passage between stacks
of gas drums, stockpiled  

electric wire, a rat, like a latch, slaps. A 
dog laps a puddle of green muck
beneath the trickling, communal faucet, shies
away, unsteady as a newborn calf.  

Through thick brown haze, the
sun blazes. A girl sprinkles water from a
tin soup can onto rows of rag-like
cabbages in a patch. The soil’s slippery,

stained black. The shack’s built with
junked tin sheets, scavenged steel nails.
The parents left to forage. An old woman
spots me, steps back inside.

After my Father’s Funeral

Candle—
shadows light
an

altar. A
lamp revises
a room.

Nights,
stars in
italics. A

name casts
Braille upon
a stone.