If I Do Not Reply (selected poems)

By Tammy Lai-Ming Ho, from If I Do Not Reply, Shearsman Books, 2024

Maybe

Maybe when three sparrows

line up neatly on a swing in Yuen Long, whoever looks on patiently enough

will win the Mark Six.

 

Maybe goldfish bought in Mong Kok are telepathic and share the secrets

of their new owners. ‘She is lonely.’ ‘This one is lonely too.’

‘Nobody in the family talks.’

 

Maybe in the small hours

the letters on Lan Kwai Fong street signs rearrange themselves to thwart

drunk English professors.

 

Maybe the stray dogs in Tin Shui Wai are soldiers who died heroically

in the Battle of Hong Kong reincarnated.

 

Maybe in the many nearby ghost towns, ghosts do roam

and send old-fashioned good wishes to abstract relatives in distant homes.

 

NOTE: Read the Word “Note” Aloud

Note: This is not the actual cover of the book

They removed the offensive artwork

and the title, which appropriates a slogan currently deemed obsolete. Note: Some pages are reluctantly left blank The writers and artists and lawyers and professors who contributed the material were no longer in a position

to grant us permission, either by choice or due to death. Note: On account

of the authenticity of “the event” being challenged, the same said event was redacted This erasure applies also to poetic names of streets

which must now be metaphorical, anonymous: miles through the snubbed streets, chaotic classified scenes unfold in streets

that are themselves arteries threatened to be folded up, goods and gods thrown

onto the streets, grievances on the streets continuing into and beyond October.

Note: There is a Cantonese note of Cantonese contempt in some Cantonese witnesses’

Cantonese verdicts A valid proof

that the language is versatile, versifiable and not an error in printing. Note: No pages should be on display or reproduced

The aforementioned event is a historical placeholder, a splendid anomaly, defined by a bold tone of definite pitch

made once by the people’s voice.

14 October 2022

 

Teapot, Broth, Body

My city is a famed teapot. Inside, it’s darkly stained –

the colours and flavours of past sovereigns and leaves. Every new brew already decades old,

telling of disappointed prophecies.

 

My city is a boiling broth –

an everlasting stew of local bones, foreign teeth, and ancient poison. It’s been years, this gruesome business grinding freedoms into fresh, urgent phantoms.

 

My city is a body with several tongues, too clumsy to all fit in a stunned,

shut mouth. Words that emerge, come out in fits and terror. Its heart has no suburbs; all year round

it’s a burning, rioting season.

19 October 2022

 

Removed and Rectified

you read from a distant life it’s almost back to normal calligraphy meets glass tubes

 

meets flames meets memories bright above the heads

of those who know customs

 

and those who stray for a while like a garage dog or a shop cat all things advertised: bridal

 

medicinal, gambling, pawning lust in multifaceted incarnations life is almost back to normal

 

on strict government orders neon signs, glamorous, decadent continue to come down

 

local trade and visual history backdrop to at once futuristic and nostalgic filmic wastelands

 

loudest and most towering that once stood out now hang

on museum walls or reproduced

 

in miniatures in living rooms from a distance your regular bus going under the signs

 

you remember now takes others to their own lopsided homes

no gatherings allowed

on strict government orders to divert its route

regular people’s feet

 

can’t make more hopeful manifestos for a while you read from a distance life is almost back to normal

21 October 2022

 

Are You Becoming Critically Endangered?

Do you collect shiny objects? When alarmed what plea do you make? Why do people

in your city have a penchant for joking? What is a group of you called, as in:

a siege of cranes or a lamentation of swans?

 

Can you be shot legally? When was the last time you congregated in large numbers

to unlearn self-censorship? Which factor is the most important in determining your carbon footprint?

 

Do you deploy infrasonic rumbling to communicate with others? Are you as a people a symbol of anything

universal? What prominent mythologies are associated with your city?

 

Can you put two systems together?

Is it true that collectively you have great long-term memory but sometimes

you opt for feigning amnesia out of insecurity about security?

 

How do you vote within your packs?

In times of contention, which groups of you have a remarkable ability to convert themselves into warriors, revealing

tough scales, beaks, horns, or words?

 

Whose antlers are used to make handles

of umbrellas? If you roar to mark or defend your territory, how far can your roar

be heard from? What help is available for someone suffering from a phobia?

Are you social animals, like penguins, living in colonies? How long does it take to empty your city of its essence and ethos?

What percentage of democracy

have you explored and mapped to date?

 

If you were to give your mouth a name – such as Aristotle’s lantern – what would that be? Approximately how many years does it take to rebuild demolished piers? Who are your power-driven predators?

 

How many broods of young

can your government imprison? Is your city now one of the largest global producers

of migrants? How many heart and time zones must your city contain?

22 October 2022

 

 

Pearls of Wisdom

How do you know a watermelon is ready? You slap it and hear

its echoing sound.

 

Whoever comes to this city,

helps forge it into its current being, can claim it and have their say.

 

How quickly one forgets

he who was apologetic deserves no love from you.

 

An old newspaper tells new stories every other decade.

 

Tyrants will not all die. But a people, sometimes, may actually pay attention.

 

Art

For some, the art of leaving isn’t hard

to master. The one-way plane tickets, the house, possibly a backyard. The city loses something

 

each day: freedoms; its finest lawyers, writers, scholars who will one day look back

at this broken ship of a town

 

with loving nostalgia. The art of staying, however, must be mastered regardless of how, for those whose roots evidently know this is the land

 

where their bones shall be ground to dust. The mountains have seen their ancestors. They own this city, this realm, even the bittersweet summer

 

sun. Some wonder if the harbour will smell the same. The trees? How long will it take before mail is confiscated? When will coins

 

and banknotes erase Hong Kong? Will we speak a different tongue and become

a placid province? Going, going, gone.

after Elizabeth Bishop

 

At This Moment, Everyone Is a Revolution

i Some People

Some people shed their petty personalities like snake skin, only to grow a new layer that is a strengthened version of the old. On the other side of the river, it is no longer the same river – some people accept this as fact, others secretly question it because they don’t understand. One week always flows into the next and a chorus of international cameras can’t reverse time, can’t change some people’s minds. Some people take turns to bleed for what they think is worthwhile. There are those who succumb to flattery, delighted at being called intelligent, having a good poetry ear and perfectly timed. There are those however who loathe praise, every hyperbolic word is perceived as a carefully constructed insult. In a neat room no one is foolish enough to throw the first piece of trash on the floor. In an already tarnished room, some people readily fantasize smashing its glasses and concealed windows. When some people find out they are in a novel, they demand to be given the ability to create tears, to genuinely cry. Some people sell lies. Some fabricate them as though in a party line. Some live in lies like living in a sealed showroom. Some people look on. Some take action.

13 June 2019

 

ii The Fall

A note of demands on behalf of the whole city that has been battered, tortured, frustrated by the inhumane and tone-deaf government of Hong Kong: “No Extradition to China. Make Love No Shoot. Total withdrawal of the extradition bill. We are not rioters. Release the students and injured. Carrie Lam step down. Help Hong Kong.” What must have gone through his mind as he fell? That he was there, and then he was no more. What does it say about a city that drives one of its own literally off a building, in public sight? We have tried and tried to make our voices heard. Some sing hymns. Some forgo food. Some make signs. Some cry in silence, trembling, nursing a lingering heartache. Do we all have to imprint notes across the city, on its mountains and bridges and lampposts and shop fronts and park benches and walls, for us to be finally heard? The bell tolls for us all.

15 June 2019

 

iii We Are What We are Made of

Beginning from every day

tears are shed: their tails are puffs

of smoke. Beginning from yesterday walls are covered in squared colours,

street names changed. Beginning from then poetry can mean, be, and stay. Beginning from June 2019, people

in a city look at each other: million faces, million thoughts, united in water, practice, slogans. Beginning from now,

there is no turning back, no stopping. We are what we are made of: desperation and unbeatable will.

This is the beginning of the open secret that we don’t ever quit.

25 July 2019

 

iv The City I Live in

On weekends, people walk the streets in the fierce sun on the brink of fainting –

grey sweat comes down to their ankles when a river of heads chants add oil.

At least one in seven people choose to boldly speak a forbidden language of signs, posters, and videos; of hope, metaphors, malls, and proliferating Lennon Walls. The city I live in is no longer

only office buildings with glass fronts

or identical shops that sell identical things. It is a city of diverse limbs that each know their direction – wherever they are needed, they go.

27 July 2019

 

v This Moment

At this moment an airplane is landing. The pilot makes the usual announcement

before explaining to passengers about the peaceful protesters at the airport dressed in black.

He switches from English to Cantonese to say the most heartfelt words.

 

At this moment a family is going to Disneyland.

A little boy is oblivious to teargas and rubber pallets, thinking only of Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh.

May he grow up to never know the fear of being caned.

At this moment

 

train stations are transformed into battlegrounds, blood of citizens on floor

like abstract calligraphy. The trains take no one to nowhere until someone makes some right decisions.

 

This moment a people is angry. They carry on with their lives barely. How many more days to endure for a government to listen and show remorse?

 

At this moment, everyone is a revolution.

28 July 2019

 

vi Anecdotes for The Future

0.

Sometimes a typhoon

is not just a natural phenomenon.

It coincides

with a movement.

0.

They would claim they are not tyrants, only realists, patriots.

0.

Dark night. Fireworks horizontally deployed from a moving black car, weapons with ringing sounds

and colours. Smoke

gets in the eyes of protesters in the town where I grew up.

0.

A gun’s mouth can point Middle fingers of the police are raised

All that is steel or sturdy can become youngsters’ makeshift shields

Our full bodies are alert

0.

Near dawn, strangers

in their separate rooms, on different sofas or looking out of their myriad windows, collectively sigh or cry.

0.

The disobedient citizens are determined to be, to be disobedient,

in all parts of the city – flowers blossom everywhere. All

walks of lives, all hues of hair, cut open our regular existence to forge a new Hong Kong.

 

31 July 2019

 

If I Do Not Reply

If I do not respond, think:

it must be because of the mountains. The signal is poor here,

and all my portraits are gone

 

except those of me

looking angry, lost, and young. A face from decades ago, ancient, with no irregular lines

 

impressed on my forehead.

I miss my collection of random books like an illiterate person misses his education.

 

If I do not call, it’s because my blood has darkened from I don’t know what. If I pray it’s not to a god

 

but to the sun that brightens generations before it dies, burnt through the eras, the changing codes and modes of morality.

 

If I do not reply, think:

it’s because I have given myself to the man-made weather.

The sea as a thick closet,

the sky is a blue ceiling, even

the trees welcome me as a rotting singing bird. If I do not say anything, believe me,

 

it’s not what they tell you.

I have disappeared into a body of mirrors, only reflecting other mirrors, of this life.

 

6 February 2021