you still have something of the ghost about you
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rancid, familiar
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You Still Have Something of The Ghost About You:
video, color, 5:07
Sources:
Journey to the West, Wu Cheng-en, trans. WJF Jenner
A Chinese Beastiary, Anonymous, trans. Richard E. Strassberg
The Aenid, Virgil, trans. John Dryden
Inferno, Dante Alighieri, trans. Rev. H. F. Cary
Dreams of a Red Chamber, Cao Xue Qing, trans. H Bencraft Joly
Baidu encyclopedia definition: Meng Po’s Soup
X, John Cage
Rancid, Familiar
video, color, 3:55
Inspired by a story by Alicia López
You still have something
of the ghost about you
There is no boat to ferry you
I not remember that
e'er I was estrang'd
from
thee.
All who
appear are sinful ghosts
bare feet
matted hair.
The bridge many miles long
and only three fingers wide.
Below a
pond
the water parched
mud dry lotus flowers decayed
even the roots dead.
Ill-fated lives
plunged
in.
Girls singing their obedience
lightly thrumming
the virginals.
But
none of them
none who have passed away
who have not as yet come
into it
at the time of the opening
of the heavens and the laying
of black clouds and turbid mists
none of the ghosts can be seen.
And
you
with your mortal eyes
and violent flirtation
could not possibly be allowed
to know your bitter fate.
Above no railings for support.
Watch how
the souls throng
In Lethe's lake they
long oblivion taste,
it's like nothing on earth i feel as i did
before
beComing a ghost
You are waiting with
the soup of forgetfulness:
a bowl of river water
two
daylilies to erase misery
three
fragrant roses
Of future life secure,
forgetful of the past
mouth to mouth another recipe:
one raw tear
of plums
two pearls drooping
three bitter
elastic steps
four bridal pillows penetrated
five brewed in the night dew
six anchors of thunder
seven secret feelings of a child
last gather your own tears
eight bitternesses mixed together useless grief
i havE
no regrets
i weLcome
whatever happens next
Rancid, Familiar
My father is always looking for his dead mother in me.
Your Father Is Smiling Now That
You Are Home, my mother says, pulling back the
curtains. He Was Up All Night
Waiting For You.
I find him
downstairs, peeling a steaming black tea-egg. I look at his face.
How familiar, the
outline of my nose.
The Man I
Sometimes Say the Forbidden Word To asks me to imagine him as my final lover.
I Cannot Imagine A Future, I tell him. I do not tell my
mother, my father about him. He is my secret. It rots between the two of us.
One day he writes,
You’re not ready.
Your Father Doesn’t Want
Your Name On The Lease,
My mother says, He thinks you will betray him.
All around us,
mother are succumbing to breast cancer, fathers to secretaries.
Men Are Like
That, I say.
What Do You Know
About Men?
My mother says.
At five years old, I see the image of my father in the
shower.
I See You!
I screech from the bathroom door. I See You I See You I See You I See You I See You!
He splashes water
at the door.
His body, forbidden.
My mother says, Your Father Loves You Too Much. You Have Been Spoiled Rotten.
溺爱, We Are Loving You Until You Drown.
We Are Drowning You.
Every day before going for our afternoon walk, my father and mother and
I pee into the same toilet, to save water, flush in one go at the end. I am
dissolving into them.
The smell, rancid and familiar.