Issue 001 in puerto de la cruz

C.K. Hugo Chung

IN PUERTO DE LA CRUZ

Before departure, my rash subsided, fading into the marble veins. A horned sign of corporal withdrawal, a visceral protest pleading spiritual rejuvenation.

Twenty two hours later, under the white hot Atlantic sun, I arrived at Canary Island, covered in scratches, yearning for corporeal cantos of poetics.

不要問我從哪裡來, as I was a nobody to this secular island, a canary to a home wedding away from home, gutteraling 流浪遠方，流浪……

Clad in symbolic black and red, I ambled along the shoreline of Puerto De La Cruz, listening to the eddy jazz of discordance, feeling the waves of itches, forgetting whys.

My hotel for dreams didn’t provide AC, so every day was a cycle of four seasons. At night I squeezed into a drinking hole, colonizing or being terrorized by the jukebox:

Bailando
Baila con la melodía de la melancolía sin palabras

The next day, in a mesh dress, I greeted everyone who would smile at me, amused by my tipsy persona, and suppressed the rash ambushing my elbows, my inner thighs, my upper lips.

At ten p.m., when the kids flooded in, and the beach club morphed into a mosh pit, I could only rely on valium and melatonin to lullaby, faceless, dreamless.

In Cafe de Paris, eating the driest steak as my butthole, I gossiped with my scheming divas about the fragmented characters we encountered so far:

Bailando
bailemos con la cara dulce que no sabía lo que quería

Clad in mandatory black and red, I wanted to be the invisible hand that cradled. A rainbow slap, a sequined wuh-wuh, the festive overhang breezed a native hieroglyph:
Don’t Stop Believin’ 為了夢中的橄欖樹 Street light, people 流浪遠方，流浪

When the carnival troupe graced for the show, drums whipped and feathers flamed, my conscience took off: hands clapping, feet stomping, to the people I cherished, the New York I once claimed, now shading to limbo.

Broken grammars, piecemeal emotions, a DJ’s sour pout refusing to play Renaissance throughout the night. Not even for the dreamy olive fronds.

Bailando
Qué hay de malo si queremos bailar como divas

When the night ended in a piss smell club with kids, I lifted my mesh dress as a farewell: good night a nomadic seance, good night a wronged presumption, good night a sweat stained hairy toe, good night a speechless drunk, good night a hidden
want, good night a shielded not-want.

不要問我從哪裡來, as I was a nobody to this secular island, but a canary guest to a home wedding away from home, gutteraling 流浪遠方，流浪.

Taiwanese by nature, New Yorker by nurture, C.K. Hugo Chung is a bi-cultural poet whose previous publications include Red Envelope (Spotlight Entertainment, 2022), Self-Writeous (TWG 2018), Taiwan First Hand: An Expatology (2017), and several chapbooks (Writeous, 2008-12). In addition to reading and writing poetry, Chung enjoys red wine and Real Housewives franchises. A proud member of TPC since its inception.

The Chinese song, “The Olive Tree,” is written by San Mao. San Mao. (1979) sung by Chyi Yu. Li Tai-hsiang Productions. The English song, “Don’t Stop Believin’,” is written by Steve Perry. Cain, J., S. Perry, and N. Schon. (1981). On Escape. Columbia Records.