Issue 003 – creole or killing mosquitos softly

Aurora Chang 張瓊方

creole, or killing mosquitos softly

at 午休 a pressed cheek against
those low wooden tables which open to a
country of reveries
the lushness of summer cicadas
beads of sweat trailing down
glass bottles of artificially flavoured milk
aiyu-seed rough
bamboo leaf fragrant
newspaper oil-soaked

she is of the thih-bé that
guides you to the gutter
fatherland and motherland
peach garden by way of cloud forest
she is of a love beyond reason and compels
roots to grow inside veins
she makes you rip your tongue out

call it the viscera of birthright —
“born political” —
indentations of blue or green
or red or turquoise
inked over the mind and
wearing it down to nothing
an infestation of rising suns and
bleached bone rays taunting
the 青 of sky
or was it a burst of yellow stars?
or was it a cascade of white stars?
celestials and colours enter your vocabulary
after the ㄅㄆㄇㄈs do but
before the creolisation
of lilies and strawberries
and sunflowers
and blue birds

she burns so bright in that
wretched international order
eager to please and easy to abuse
the history of history of history
not descendant of the dragon but
enraptured by monsters further west
so you earn victimhood
learn victimhood
redefine indigeneity and forget that
violence begets violence begets violence

“me and mine” on our knees
our knees which rest on the necks of
“them and theirs”
there is talk of dignity and democracy
chess pieces and balancing
the space between
a rock and a hard place but
she makes me rip my tongue out

i tire of the silicon game
of being on my knees
i want to annihilate the celestials and
bleed the colours dry
let the creole morph into
life unconstrained by gardens and forests
universal and lovely and loving

still her mountains and waters haunt me
nights sweltering with the buzz of a
mosquito landing on the curve of an ear
before i kill it, softly
the same ear they said would be
cut off
if i pointed fingers
at the moon

Aurora Chang 張瓊方 is an activist and organiser from Taoyuan, Taiwan. She is a member of New Bloom and has been active in the Tibetan, Ukrainian, and Palestinian solidarity movements in Taipei. Currently she’s pursuing a Master’s in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Glasgow. She is interested in neography and is working on the fourth iteration of her constructed writing system that follows the transliteration logic of Bopomofo. She is also occasionally an artist and bartender.