Poems from 2016

By Mingji Liu · December 31, 2016

Poems written in 2016 by Mingji Liu.

#FFC0DB

2016 · Mingji Liu

FLUSHING,
BLUSHING,
BRINE BRINE BRINE BRINE,
BRINE BRINE BRINE BRINE,
SHRIMPS OF AWKWARDNESS.

GAWK-GAWK.
CAN’T STOP SHOVELLING ‘EM IN MY MOUTH!

WADING ARTLESS LAKE,
CAROTENOIDS IN MY TUM.
TURNING PHOENICOPTERUS
WITH ROSY FEATHERED BUM.

AND LOOK,
HERE’S ONE I PREPARED EARLIER ===> ∗

oooOOOoooOOOooo

PINK LIKE SALMONSIDE,
PINK LIKE GALAHFACE,
PINK LIKE BUBBLEGUM,
PINK LIKE CHRISTCHILD,
PINK LIKE WILDPEONY,
PINK LIKE PINK LIKE

, in terms of delirium tremens ( a more pink? ) c.f. rosa del inca, corundum, amaranth, bitterbloom, sowbread, sakura, maladroitness, myoglobin, astaxanthin,

PINK LIKE PORKFLESH,
PINK LIKE WORMHEAD,
PINK LIKE TEETHSOIL,
PINK LIKE BABYCOCK,
PINK LIKE CUNTPETAL,
PINK LIKE PINK LIKE

oooOOOoooOOOooo

GAWK-GAWK.
AND FLAP FLAP FLAP,

GAWK-GAWK.
AND TRAP TRAP TRAP,

COME INSIDE ME,
SHRIMPY WIMPY SHRIMPS;
ENTER ME, TRANSFORM ME,
PAINT MY SOUL TILL
FUMBLING (
A SHADE BEYOND MEASURE)
MUMBLING,
STUMBLING, IT ACCEPTS
THIS HEART OF PINKNESS.

– a willow’s cry

2016 · Mingji Liu

Alone and my,
the sky
and sky and sky.

– grass seeds fly – a willow’s cry

– without knowing why
– recalling her eyes.

Even poplars sigh of
sky and
sky and sky
and sky and sky.

Yes.

I think I’m ready to say goodbye,

or so, I lie.

An existential necklace.

2016 · Mingji Liu

Bead it through,
Let it break like the bread of days.
Bead made of pen twirls,

The hunger of cured ham,
Taste of whiskey, crimson dress hot,

This whiskey tastes as hot as a
Crimson dress. Tight fit,
Wolf-lolling. Gap toothed, beaked whale,
God. Where am I now.

and you can even swallow the silk

2016 · Mingji Liu

skull egg.
head sac.
sweet little
spider mind.

carapace.
mandibles.
o raise her gentle, hatch her blind.

eight black feet and eight black holes.
nestled in a rosy skull.

great black eyes,
those straight black feet,
between the ears, she’s ready to feast.

·· soft and stroke, her pedipalp ··
·· brain-stem tickles, a hairy leg ··
·· dripping menses, these chelicerae ··

her silk,
smells of the dancing floor,
semen-spills down her
spinnerets.

her fangs,
ripple in pink-and-purple,
freshly cut, an oyster’s
vulva.

death stalks the dining hall.
death stalks these webbed walls.
too many feelings to withdraw.
too many thoughts, too many claws.

there’s too much to eat at the dinning hall,
look how the spider’s so pretty and tall.

·· a dinner of juice ··
·· a plate of husks ··
·· fangs come out ··
·· let’s fuck them to dust ··

IT’S TIME FOR
Dinner.
Dinner.
Dinner.
Dinner.
Dinner.
Dinner.
Dinner.
because she is a little winner.

hold her always,
hold her kind,
treasure her perfect,
o little spider mind.

and even when she hatches in the head
all slick and fat and black and ill,
please be afraid
and love her still.

little smile eyes and little smile knives.
sweet little spider mind.

annelid women’s weekly

2016 · Mingji Liu

Ingredient:

• Four packets of horsehair worms (or thin, viscous tube worms)*

• Two chopped earthworms, with clitellum scooped out

• One chopped trematode flatworm, also de-glanded

• Fresh salad life: baby worm, redworm, baby periproct

• Hokkien soy sauce

• Two tbsp of ragworm flakes

• One tbsp of leech spice

• Priapulid oil

• Half a cup of sediment cysts

*For a non-nematomorpha option, replace with giant Gippsland worms and gluten-free soy sauce.

Serves: Friends

Instructions:

1. Discard the desiccated, arthropod hosts that came with horsehair worms.

2. Thanks.

3. Break horsehairs into small pieces. Boil them until tender.

4. Run horsehairs under cold water in colander and drain.

5. Put cold horsehairs in salad bowl. Apply generous amounts of priapulid oil and sediment cysts.

6. Mix.

7. Add earthworms, flatworms, and salad life.

8. Toss.

9. Add ragworm flakes, leech spice, and a wash of soy.

10. Toss.

11. Reflect upon the fragile, segmented beauty of their bodies.

12. Enjoy.

Coming across a confidante’s profile on a dating website (61% match, 20% enemy) on Wednesday night and all of a sudden my chest feels tight. I resist the urge to click on it and all those awful feelings return – that aching pain that she will never want what I have to give.

2016 · Mingji Liu

This is a poem about garlic bread.

O tender, garlic-washed meal,
Swaddled in steaming foil.
How I love its soft mouth-feel,
Its salts and virgin olive oil.

Centrepiece of the party plate,
Scoured and scattered to a crumb,
No other nibble can be as great.
Serve it all. I want to feel numb.

G reat!
A romatic!
R evolutionary!
L icktacular!
I t-tastes-so-good!
C runchy!

Such a heady, herb-topped snack,
Concocted for the ravenous addict.
Only $1.90 in a Coles twin pack –
Why does it get to be so perfect?

Prepared with an oven’s kiss,
It soars above the culinary tides.
I take in all its chewy bliss
To fill my aching, wounded sides.

B **rave!
**R **edeemable!
**E **ngaged!
**A **dult!
***D oes-not-skip-therapy!

• Done it now, mate. You’re out of spit.
  Someone with teeth’s gonna find this,
  Realise you’re pathetic and unfit,
  Glare from the kitchen
  and they’ll hiss:

“Mingji, you’re such a piece of shit.”

If only I could broil my head…
If only I could grill my soul…
So like cheap, fucking garlic bread,
It too becomes acceptable and whole.

Consort

2016 · Mingji Liu

Lament, Artemisia, lament!
Rake your grief
Across bloodless riverbeds.
Pour your drought
Into the swollen
Hills of Caria.
Let your heatwave of want
Drain the fields from
Lycia to Phygia,
From Pisidia to
AAAAH FUCK –

Lament, sister-wife, lament!
Smear his ashes,
Black as widowhood,
To your broken lip.
Dissolve his body
In trembling wine and
Gorge it into the
Mausoleum of
Your own.

Serve all your subjects
This ghoulish,
Nail-tearing thirst.
Your courtiers, eunuchs,
Dancers, oracles,
Emissaries of Persia,
Make them taste what it feels like
To lose an earth entire.
Make them all know
All know

OH GOD NO –

And know that
No matter how grand
An elegy is written,
No matter how high
The marble has risen,

He will never come back.
Not ever.

Crow letter.

2016 · Mingji Liu

Saw a dead crow today –

Stop 26 outside royal park station –
Broken black brolly – discarded in wet grass –
Face – shame covered – a defeated wing –
No more baby noise – no more beady hops –
Just a dead crow in child’s resting pose.

Sick of orange pill – nauseous stomach empty –
No more acetaminophen – goodbye wine on friday –
Tired from keeping in – wired with instant coffee –
Old with lips on weekends – cold from sushi lunches  –

Sometimes I just – sometimes I just –
I don’t know.

Saw a crow eating crow today –
The feast was silent – his chest was lonely  –
Could taste its tarry strings – dark bitter feathers –
They ate each other up – inside it ate its brother –
Saw a crow eat another – I saw it and I wept.

Culinary nuts

2016 · Mingji Liu

Peanut.
Arachis hypogaea.
Or groundnut.

Today, I discover
You are not a nut.

Peanut.
A grain legume.
Leguminosae.

But peanut.
I knew you.
How can this be?

Peanut.
Crop of lies.
Peanut.
Judas pea.
Peanut.
Trollop spread.
Peanut.
Jezebel’s snack.

And yet, this meal
of mendacity grows.

Brazil nut.
An angiosperm, not a nut.
Pine nut.
A gymnosperm, not a nut.
Walnut.
A drupe, not a nut.

I have eaten falsehoods
for far too long.

I weep for you,
Peanut.
Truly, I do.

Peanut.
Very tasty.
Not a nut.

Dido, grief of Carthage

2016 · Mingji Liu

Dido, grief of Carthage  
Or: recollections of a panic attack in mid-sep 2015

Trapped in a fever dream,
down the whirlpool,
oh oh oh i scream.
why do i tread water at your party,
encircled by wine-dark sirens
singing their galley-slave ditty
while my hands are tied to this glass of gin?
why didn’t you greet me like you did
to that girl with the pearl-face grin
and flower hot name,
or notice
my silk summer frame
and pink roses i wear just for you?
why won’t you stroke my ragged claws,
the cockles and cowries i accrue,
or touch my mermaid hair so wet?
you must see my bones are coral made,
my heart a sinking drift net.
you Cetus.
you brute.
why has time beset us
such that even when i am certain

@@@@

your long white arms
will never touch me again,
i still feel your scalding charms?
oh how my fly ash failures rush to me
like wicked djinn
stinging with endless glee
inside my tindered brain!
i once tried to cast your embrace
into the ruby depths of Jahannam
by writing my disgrace
into a desperate letter
and striking it with a redhead match.
i wanted every second i thought you better
destroyed upon a flickering page.
but still my mind forges
this pig iron cage,
where you and i
melt in the crucible of your backyard,
into rivulets of shame and alkali,
sludge and longing and

%%%%

sinkholes of desire,
pitch-dark
with hollow bulbs and viscid mire.
i fear that if i linger in this false home
any longer i will be buried
alive under the clay, the loam,
the pebble, the peat,
of leached and tunnelled panic,
with only dwarfs and serpents to greet.
but tonight will not fester like that dance
at the beer hall
when you toyed my advance
for three fucking hours,
and …oh gods no…
the way you were thralled by her powers,
the way she made smile,
the way you kept drinking and drinking at her,
as my stomach turned to wood
and the roots of Yggdrasil
gnawed into my trembling skin
like a hand-spun drill.
now my hands won’t stop trembling from the

&&&&

cold change in the night
as i stagger out of your party.
my chest is a paper kite
fluttering like coloured prayers…
like a banished cloud
alone in the Himalayas…
but i swear upon lines of the Bardo Thodol
these lustful winds will no longer
exact such a scarring toll.
i cannot keep battering my back
with these beastly garuda wings.
i am distressed and i am a wrack
of pain and sometimes i call on aerial
beings like vultures and crows
to consume me in a cacophonous sky burial.
but no no no no!
deep inside i know this gale will pass,
i know my maladies will blow
off the cliff as my bosom comes to rest.
i am willing to fly everything to make this right.
i am going to pass this test.

####

Aeneas. You know my sorrow.
But please do not think of me.
It will pass with each tomorrow.

Eagle.

2016 · Mingji Liu

Eagle

Floats above the floating world,
Alone,
A watcher,
A cresting wave of talon.

Two great wings,
A pair of shields
Beating,
Wind-lanced and shadow.

Two black eyes,
Fleeting,
Spying the rock
And veined mountain snow.

Soars above a soaring world,
Alone,
A hunter,
Arrowhead at dawn.

A screeching dive. The rush of knives.
A shriek of feathers. The water shatters.

Bursts from the lake
With thrashing flesh,
Pink and torsional,
Like tallow between his claws.

Silently takes his prize,
Blood-wet fresh.
His beak is etched,
Sky-battered and raw.

Eagle

Pierces the land with a single glare.
Alone.
His throne,
The frozen, whistling air.

First frost

2016 · Mingji Liu

Here it turns a face again –
Father bitters of the earth.
Blades to milky crunch,
Icy worm begat in footy
Cleat holes. Night salted,
Sod locks, a daguerrotype
Morning. Hold me in this
Memory and Desire field.
Wither me. Your garden hoar.
Make wool breath mouthings:
“Begone, whore. Begone.”

Florence

2016 · Mingji Liu

Final night in Florence. We are sitting on the cold, dark slopes outside the Palazzo Pitti. The streets are largely empty and only a spotful of stars peer through the night sky of Tuscany. I tell her that the cobblestones feel tired and pensive. She offers me another cigarette as we talk into the night.

Florence is surely the most beautiful place on Earth.

This is the happiest I have felt in a long time.

Fragments 17-21

2016 · Mingji Liu

(17)

The smell of grease. You clamber into the machine. A hissing sound. You curl inside the box. The drip of transmission fluid. You stifle a cough. Dimples of light. There are metal shavings everywhere. The pins seem loose. You take your jacket off. It was caught on a lever. Stainless slender steel. A sudden shiver. The pins seem loose. The contraption curves around you. A girdle of copper. It is surprisingly slippery inside. Best kick off your shoes. A wire swings back and forth. Little halo above you. Let it all in. Servomotors. Pins and bolts. Such mechanical functionality. Cooling pumps. A theatre of gears. Pantomime of pistons. You decide to shed your trousers. Let it all in. Tubes of petrodiesel. Cable. Pneumatics. Perhaps. Locked inside this delicious machine. You no longer have a shirt on. Irreducible interdependence. Where had you heard that before? Where did that come from? A clockwise click. Let it all in. This delicious machine. Let it all in.

(18)

LYNCHWORMS.
Dangles from ceiling cavities. As thick and as long as a man’s arm. Attracts animals, great and small, with radiant, varicoloured noose-tongues. They hang their prey and convert them into food lanterns.

A curious local recipe from the Winewaters is noted below:

• Place lynchworm tongues (roughly chopped) in a stewpot

• Stir in frog eggs, lowfish and wolfbeam juice (preferably saplings)

• Cooking time = two hours

• Do not add salt

• Serve with watercress

(19)

“Pa claimed he was terrified of the cosmos. At least, that’s what he started saying towards the end. He’d close his eyes – bury his entire face in his pillow, in fact – and start mumbling about stars and comets and asteroids. About how they were going to swallow him entire. I didn’t know what to make of it at the time.

Before long, that was all Pa ever seemed to speak about. I’d drive to the hospice every night to visit, and all I could do was sit at his bedside, as patient as the moon, while he ranted and raved about outer space.

The endless black, he called it. He said he could feel the universe eating away at him. Where others saw beauty and the infinite wonders of creation, he only saw a celestial hunger. The irradiant wastes of a supernova remnant… the fiery teeth of the Leonid meteor shower… a holocaust of colliding galaxies… our sun, a strangled ball of fusion…

Sometimes, when it was truly bad, Pa would start howling at the top of his lungs. THE STARS! THE STARS! he’d shout, over and over. One time, in a blind fit, Pa nearly hit me in the face with a bedpan (it was empty, thank goodness). All I could do at the time was dumbly stand back while the nurses pinned him down and sedated him.

As his rantings reached a fever pitch, his colleagues stopped visiting entirely. His former grad students stopped dropping by. Even Pa’s oldest friends from the Astronomical Society disappeared. Only I remained.

In his final days, he was so lost in his thoughts, I’m not sure he even recognised his own daughter anymore. I guess that in the end, the stars did truly consume him.”

(20)

*POSTAL SPIDERS.
*Sooty, cat-sized arachnids that are used by imperial households to send letters and gift parcels. The cleverest ones (usually crimson-eyed) can even be trained to repeat over a dozen simple phrases.

In Oldstadt, a popular children’s rhyme begins as follows:

“Postal spider, postal spider,
Why do you scamper?
To give the Duchess her birthday hamper!
Postal spider, postal spider,
Why do you scurry?
To give the Duke two bags of slurry!”

(21)

Mama K shuffles the pieces on the board. Clack clack clack. Tiles of copper, bone and bronze. Mama K asks you to pick nine. She always knows what is best.

The MONK PINES – expectations of a good harvest next month.

The LATEEN – prepare for new friends in your doorway.

The CRONE STAR – avoid illness at all cost.

The GOLD BRIDGE – aha! a glint in the water!

The TWO-HEADED BOY – what’s that in your pocket? better find more.

The LOTUS OF ETERNITY – fear of death meets lack of self-preservation.

The PAPER VIRGIN – don’t think about it. no, really, don’t.

The BLACK ONE – an absence is anything you want it to be.

The YESTERYEAR’S GARDEN – something past has returned.

Fragments 22-29

2016 · Mingji Liu

(22)

Absence of dialogue,
Not an artist –
A rebellious shout.

Exeunt stage left,
Pursued by sound.

(23)

In the storm’s wake, the old desert tracks stirred back into life. In the tepid, scummy pools that formed between its rusted rails, emaciated bullfrogs emerged from their cocoons to feed and wrestle and copulate in the oil-slicked mud.  A bloat-eyed lizard leapt over a twisted railway spike and snapped at dancing, spectral flies. Ambitious young leaves stretched their heads from the gravel bed. Thin smears of moss bloomed on the undersides of the wooden sleepers. 

No more trains. No more timetables. No more way stations. The dead metal snake, long abandoned to the wilds, was being reclaimed, piece by piece, track by track.

(24)

FIRST TABLET -- 1987(a) translation.

Banana, smooth….. gold skin, crescent form
[and] sweet supine. Lunchbox bane, king snack,
yellow messiah {1}, mahdi [of] fruit, [flawless (?)]
….. conjured from dirt, clay-footed goh-lem {2}
of rabbinic tradition. O! Perfection of design!
….. like the legendary sword held…..
….. by Krishna [Himself] in the Mahabharata!

(Three lines of text missing.)

….. banana, banana, musa acuminata…..
Banana and….. musa [balbisiana]…..
“….. banana, our heavenly mana…..
Banana, [instrument (?)] {3} of dharma.”

(25)

tastes like an awful dream
glass raining down in spirals
into the plums of your scalloped gums
till it leaves a sticky, blood suck
upon the roof of your mouth

(26)

SECOND TABLET -- 1987(a) translation.

O! O! O! Green {4}….. stunted pod-like fruit!
It had [wood starch flesh] {5}, with seeds
….. [the] size [of] peppercorns…..
[found] tens and tens of thousands [of years ago,] {6}
perhaps the banana is [his (?)] product of eons,
of nine-hundred blind {7} cultivars bred…..
….. curvaceous, yellow fruit we worship today.

(Rest of text missing.)

(26)

sometimes i would take your hand
and lead you into sandstorms
so deep no clarion call
could compose the voices that we lost

(27)
**
**{1}: Fairly probable restoration.
{2}: Lit. “Of men made of river clay”.
{3}: Uncertain restoration.
{4}: Pennsylvania translation, 1965.
{5}: Fairly probable restoration.
{6}: Restored from Ninth Tablet.
{7}: Contentious translation. See Giles-Hordok (1970b) for discussion.

(28)

they faltered on a hillside
they faltered in wet corridors
the bottom fell from under them and they looked up
towards a penitent sky, a flagellant moon
(29)

´ too drunk ´ committed ´ cannot redeploy ´
´ unsettled ´ anxiety loop ´ somewhere in fitzroy ´
´ her snide words ´ snide remarks ´ lip pouts for mulled wine ´
´ circle forms ´entire hall ´ she sits on the sideline ´
´ the truth ´ old memories ´ there is no chance ´
´ not the only chink at the country bush dance ´
´ sweat soaked ´ breathless ´ i chose this black sty ´
´ made your peace yet ´ stupid boy ´ another month goes by ´

Greyscale, North Coburg

2016 · Mingji Liu

أﻣﻞ إﺑﻠﻴﺲ ﺑﺎﻟﺠﻨﺔ

So here we are again. Greyscale, North Coburg.

Let’s do it together just for old time’s sake.

Somewhere near Sydney Road. SSE 7km/h.

Possible morning drizzle. I believe do it for once.

Her spotless name hath never known

One touch or taint of slander.

The bush fires dance through Yackandandah.

O Brunswick, my sons. My sons!

“Open thy doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour thy cedar.”

Give a twirl and find a couple!

Give us a giggle and make a mumble!

---

Borrow a charger. Text a dozen words.

Storm out the door. Please. Be my guest.

Lets drink alone to The Whitlams
Lets lie in bed with The Jezabels.

I had nightmares about you (that’s the truth)

I had to drink to your name (that’s our youth)

Rathdowne St.

Carlton Corks.

Driving all the way to Geelong.

Beer bottles in the daylight. Shiraz at the cinema.

Couscous camper.

The signs don’t lie,

town:folkfest, town:fundraiser

Tall white men tall beard men tall men beard
I will never be, the Victorian façade, the

On skirt on wine on cheek on skin on cheek

On tippy toes, she leans forward and kisses her cheek,

Cephalonia. Ping-Pong table. Hyperopia.

Cartwheels on the beach. Close-ups in spring.

I am cursed, I am supped with slander.

There are bush fires out near Yackandandah.

The pretty lass, the Sheila is lost

Kissed with crow’s feet. Tooth peck smile.

Chocolate hair ropes. Vulture neck.

Horse rider. She holds her mother’s whip.

A thousand sisters, a thousand cousins.

All sharing the same nose, the same face.

A free freckle lips.

You were the only chink at the Collingwood Bush Dance.

You were the only chink at the Collingwood Bush Dance.

I wish the child 

crushing stray acorns with the

root of his heels 

finds music

in every footfall. 

 

I wish the girl down the street, 

with her candle jars and vinyl tracks, 

converts everyone to veganism

with her awkward

waning smile.

How to succeed

2016 · Mingji Liu

How to succeed at business without really trying.

STEP ONE

Bury your wallet in sour grass.
Retch into a briefcase.
Keel onto night slops and
Smear kaka over your **cufflinks.
**
STEP TWO

Crawl into a pitch-hole.
Take stock of its dampness.
Do not move for seven hours,
Until a network of mould grows inside you.**
**
STEP THREE

Shovel gravel into your mouth.
Gasp at the efficient pain.
Synergise the jaw until
A gorgeous slug of blood slides down your chin.

STEP FOUR

Climb the citadel.
Toss business cards into the vortex.
Beseech towers above and gods below
That no stakeholder sees you and calls you faggot.

STEP FIVE

All the while you weep and wail and
Grow with sobbing despair at
The passing of earth.
This strong, masculine earth.

I Ching

2016 · Mingji Liu

In those ancient, green-bronzed, semi-terracotta times,

The King would beseech the Oracles of Court with Great

Questions of His Time:

“Should the Kingdom march against the North?”

“Shall Peace be forged through marriage or blood?”

“Where should the summer palace be built and in what month should I go elephant hunting?”

In those ancient, jade-faced, knife-coined times,

The Oracle would cast turtle shells in a chalice of fire,

And read the cracks in the ashen shell,

To render fortune out of heavenly woe.

The drums of war,

The fate of the countless,

The rise of wonders,

And fall of nations,

Such was foretold by the Oracle.

Even today,

In these modern, more peaceable times

We too can beseech the Oracle with Great Questions of Our Age:
“Which stocks should I invest in Financial Year 2017?”

“Shall fortune come from swipping l

“Should I get the new iPhone 7. I’m unconvinced by the merits of wireless earbuds”

All that is needed is a paperback translation of

Available for $18.95 on the Book Depository,

International shipping included.

To call on the yin and yang,

Requires neither turtles nor

Oracles of Court.

Only a handful of Yarrow Sticks

Or maybe some 5 cent pieces,

Will suffice.

However,

In these modern, secular times

It is best to conduct
I Ching readings while drunk,

After a beer or some cheap whiskey.

In the dimming, secluded light

Of your bedroom,

Lest someone think

You a superstitious crank.

Knit a failing summer,

2016 · Mingji Liu

Knit a failing summer,
blushing, brake-light and brilliant.
Weave a leaf-fall sweater,
pilled, patchworked and petalled.

Handsew this threadbare arvo and
Needle these dark chocolate evenings.

Purl stitch the Royal Parade elms,
spool in their layabout green.
Yarn over a South Yarra oak,
knotted with red-orange beads.
Button the hand-me-down plane trees,
snip off their thrift store branches.

Brew a red tea autumn,
diluted, dog-eared and drizzly.
Pour a mug of sleep-ins,
sugared, senescent and stewed.

Boil up a smoke-dried sunrise and
Filter these cupboard dust mornings.

Kettle fill the Footscray Market,
infuse its last season fruits.
Hand-pick a side road in Hawthorn,
with milky, two teaspoon stores.
Blend in those loose leaf suburbs,
cooled, fermented, tinned.

Indoors with hot tea and jumper.
Flushed of all summer thoughts.

last office day

2016 · Mingji Liu

this notebook small and flower gold

that was my

trembling gift to you

this notebook pages of blank snow

that was my letting

go

of you.

Lessons in macroeconomics

2016 · Mingji Liu

Lighthouse

2016 · Mingji Liu

I made these words for you,

They sit saint-like on the seafloor,
Bleeding ink into the strand.
They’re weightless in the calm,
Or float for a gram at most.

I promised these lines to you.

The way providence promised us the
Dunes and the yellow grass
And Lyttleton Lighthouse
Standing atop a darkling cove.

Were these the letters you were looking for?
Appearing, as intangible
As the sand that pools in the creases

Of my window sill?

macaroon

2016 · Mingji Liu

You hand me a macaroon,
Delicate as
Fingertips,
Red as your nails.

Biting into its clouds,
The taste of sugar, folded air,
Ripples across the
Tongue’s contours.

Wavelets of warm dye,
Cream in the soft banks,
An after note blushes.

Ceilings crumble and do not linger.

The ghost of this morning
Has departed.

Maelstrom in America

2016 · Mingji Liu

You told me you wanted to seize the world entire,
Before all the colours ran out, before someone picked up
All its beautiful battered pieces.

I II

Nuestra Señora de los Perdidos. Wounded wolf.

The shepherd’s found her, Limp in snowdrift, severed from the pack.
Washed ashore a desolate Fur matted with blood, it wanders
Chilean coast. Alone, in long pine shadows,
Beached in the gray, the stone, Alone, in the bitter grass,
The semen lather of sea foam. He lives in sepia tones.
She had been prow of an Lingers in it. A grayscale pain.
Ancient whaler. Slavering, his wounded sides.
Witness to its ritual slaughter. No more howls.
Witness to its raging surrender. No more hunts.

The shepherd’s – with conquistador No more. No more.

Blood in their veins – Only an aching hunger

Claimed her for their chapel. Beneath a moon of brass,

Figurehead made Madonna. The amber stars.

I don’t know how much longer I can bear this.

This brokenness inside. Swirling, summons, unending.

I never understood how you could bear it so well.

III IV

Wolf-hunger burns inside him. Cleansed of barnacles, sea worms.
He can no longer feel Skin scrubbed down to a film
His extremities. Of watered milk.
The wolf imagines Eyes of brown glass.
A bird carcass in the snow. She wept lacquer from
Blanched feathers, a broken neck. Her doe eyes while
The wolf imagines The shepherd’s drank
A toad emerging from the carcass. Beer before evening prayers
The wolf imagines and And went to bed
He weeps. Dreaming of wine country.

I never understood how you could.

Why didn’t you pick up those broken pieces?

The shattered plates?

Sometimes, I guess, sometimes, I just

I don’t know.

Maycomb

2016 · Mingji Liu

We were never meant to
rise to Atticus.
Improbable figure of
the Father,
Cicero-tongued and
Cato-virtued, faulting
in the chalky heat.

Nor were we to
grow the ragamuffin Scout
in our hearts.
A jump-denimed tomboy,
moon-curious and
all-seeing in her
childish, beating love.

No. We were supposed to
live in Maycomb Herself.
You and I,
inhabiting Her entire,
made townsfolk to
Her sweet and genteel streets,
lined with oak and cages.

We were meant to
see in the puddles
of the needling rain
the faces of Her farmers,
Her negroes, Her daughters,
Her preachers, Her judges
staring back at us
in all their lucid shortfalls,
in all our blindsided
humanity.

Miracle on the Dardanelles

2016 · Mingji Liu

Dying in the red earth, birth father

Dry heaves and convulses

Rivulets of nation-state

Seeds of cordite

Little death of sulphur, ash, and tin

The screaming night

Birthed a nation from the tip of his glans

Convulsing in his boyish muscles

Dry heaving in the dead earth

Made sterile by shells and machine-printed bullets

And Ottoman bayonets

Inseminated by the end of a Turkish bayonet

How could this miracle come

Not but a virgin boy from Country New South Wales

Three wise Turks came and put a bayonet in his belly

The harrumph of Egyptian whores

All women of the world despair and rejoice

This surly child the father the image of the son

Did he give strength to these

Sprawling suburbs and freeway expanse

The burning eucalypt and the protest marches

Did we give birth to the parades main street

The boos and jeers

The darkie’s tears

No mothers breast to suckle

There is no place for women here

No place for marches or despair

This boy, the father, to the child.

myxo|myxy

2016 · Mingji Liu

chest pains
a shadow play of rabbits
it fills we up|we up its fill
from colburg north to collingwood
it fills we down

a tennov state
tumours on face|face to rumours
you bloody
tumours on face

pour a thimble rose water
it cuts the gem
slow crushing|grinding deep
it cuts the heat
delirium street

has it been|it has been
too long

picture book conjunctivitis
a panic egg
sweat plus tears
and beg on|no and beg

hemorrhagic friend
cob his|her pen
its infectious you know
another false end

repel|leper
a purulent release
liquorice and monk pepper
could this sinking
even buy peace?

we didn’t try

didn’t we try

nothing to find and
nothing to rest
stress plastic|plastic chest
nothing to find and
nothing divine

out behind
the ivy creep shed
.22 air rifle
a rabbit not worth
a rabbit
bled|dead

Netflix Extended Life 50/50 Antifreeze – 64 oz.

2016 · Mingji Liu

molehill eye

bantam spite

naked thigh

bishop white

curtain low

privy screen

doona toe

sticky glean

legion lights

sunday face

torpid bytes

laptop grace

أﻣﻞ إﺑﻠﻴﺲ ﺑﺎﻟﺠﻨﺔ

bed sincerity

siete voi qui, ser Brunetto?

stab disparity

O’Connor. Silencio.

2016 · Mingji Liu

Voice of God slowly dying –
Ringing sound in my head.
Drunk in O’Connor,
Alone and dusky night.

…You came here…  last Christmas…

a Canberra piece-wise function…

What salvage beggars me here?
With heart, a liar, half-pounded?
Limerent and drunk.
Silencio and silencio.

Possum growls.
She smells the smiling,
Purple dress I hold in my head.

Limerent and drunk.
Silencio. Silencio.
Silencio.

pigDreaming

2016 · Mingji Liu

three little piglets, oink! oink! oink!
born & penned for this piggy week.
three little piglets, squee! squee! squee!
pinked & pinched with fat piggy cheeks.
three little piglets, bonk! bonk! bonk!
brained & mulched by stunbolt’s beak.
three little piglets,        !        !        !
& & & they no longer squeak.

cherub little piglets · into heaven they fly
chubby little piglets · in my skillet they fry
offal & mince · those sweet juicy ends
in the belly you go · my sweet little friends
for i eat my fucking friends oh yes
i eat my fucking friends & i eat
eat my fucking friends yes i eat
my fucking friends & i eat my
fucking friends i eat my fucking
friends. i eat them gravy made & torn behind laneways – i devour them tamarind sauced & shredded under park benches – i suck their rapeseed oil & seized by highway lights –

HANG THEM ALL i say
hang them by a badger’s tail, red swan’s beak & hedgehog’s feet,
lynch them by a yellow mole’s nose, magpie’s tongue, wallaby’s cock,
rope them all i say – ROAST THEM ALL i say
masticate your coworkers as though the whole world is one giant pig god · gushing with fevered sinews · moaning between your molars · cut the rubbery tethers of your god throat · just take the penknife & saw & clench & augh & saw &
free them
Free Them
FREE THEM
!     !     !
their tails make skein make noose take leather take heed f­­or perhaps even this brittle boy will break the hymens of their purpling heads.
oink oink little piglet. go on.
get out of here.

I’ve heard apparently that pigs are incapable of looking up at the sky.
Well. Guess that makes two of us.

Prague

2016 · Mingji Liu

Midnight on the Charles Bridge.

The hawkers, pickpockets, and beggars of Praha have retired for the night. Only lovers, loners, and street cleaners remain. All of us caught under the gaze of a menagerie of dead saints.

I glimpse the barest hint of snow between the columns of street light. I haven’t seen snow all winter. Not when I was in Berlin, or Turin, or even in Zurich. Now I am craving for it to snow. I am yearning for the sky to open up and bury me.

I linger around on the bridge for a few minutes, readying myself for a winter miracle. But nothing happens.

Strč prst skrz krk.

Rewinds

2016 · Mingji Liu

Peel open and peek:

inside the flapping, lolling mouth
of our mother’s photo album.

laminated with a sticky-wash skin
in grainy, colour-locked glamours.

encircled as we are, backlit and gypsy-like,
upon the retina of her old kodak.

Leaf through and look:

at our mother’s postgrad bungalow,
and the cats she found and raised alone.

and here, in burnout red, our ex-brothers,
with their lucid, low alley guitars.

and these polaroids of nameless children,
in some backyard mummery we long forgot.

Browse, then burrow:

deep into this picture house novel,

framed by weddings. birthdays. sleepovers.
reunions. divorces. second-hand toyotas.
painted kitchens. political borders. the first dog we ever got.

Then her final photo. Book ends.
Snap shut.
The film roll clicks.
And our lives rewind again.

Sannakji (!)

2016 · Mingji Liu

Mr Christopher Hulu, CEO of Kraken Industries, and a most highly distinguished giant Pacific octopus (BCom. UC, MBA. UQ, E. dofleini), was interrupted Last Tuesday while skimming the morning paper. This was to his immense chagrin, as he had left very specific instructions never to be disturbed in the first five minutes of the day, for that was when he fastidiously scanned the stock prices of his Atlantic Counterparts (and also quickly checked the football scores). Christopher bubbled furiously when he was told that an external visitor (not even someone from senior management, for wrack’s sake!) was waiting in his foyer and was a Would Not Take No For An Answer kind of guy. After debating whether or not to summon his personal security (consisting of two burly vampire squids who spoke very little English and were being paid off the books), Christopher decided that doing so would cause too much commotion (particularly after that nasty incident with those wretched poulpes from the union) and told his secretary to bring the visitor in. “This better be worth at least a limb”, he muttered to himself while fiddling with a stack of blueprints on his desk (for Kraken Industries was a booming conglomerate, manufacturing everything from boutique fountain pens to family submersibles to over-the-counter painkillers to sucker mitts to microwaves to candleholders) and jotting down a curt Post-It note to ask H.R. about the firing policy for littoral-witted secretaries.

The visitor, to Christopher’s surprise, turned out to be his old friend Dr Riley Bloop, a sharply-dressed yellow octopus (E. zealandicus) and Professor Emeritus of the Benthic University Environmental Science Faculty. They had first bonded over canapés five years ago at a scholarship fundraiser that Christopher’s wife Ama had organised (and, if he was being entirely honest, had done a completely unremarkable job of). Since then, the two kept in semi-regular contact, exchanging Christmas cards and kelp-gardening tips to pass onto their wives. Christopher was rather fond of Dr Bloop and thought of their relationship as solid industry-university networking. “Riley, old chum!” exclaimed Christopher, “how can I be of service?” But the professor seemed nervous (and even somewhat agitated) as he floated into his office. Dr Bloop cleared his throat. “Apologies for my intrusion, Chris,” he said, “but I’m afraid I come bringing dire news.” His voice was like cold seeps, brimming with dark stress. “You see, I’ve been doing research for my upcoming paper in The New Journal of Cephalopogenic Climatology, one on the health of our coral reef systems. While working on it late last night, I found something deeply troubling in the data.” The yellow octopus pulled a manila folder from his jacket and firmly placed it on the hardwood desk. He gave a deep sigh. “I won’t mince my words, Chris. Looking at the sensor data, I’ve discovered that the commercial activities of Kraken Industries is putting us all in danger.” He paused for effect and, upon noticing that he still held the CEO’s attention, continued: “You may not know this, but I believe your factories are pumping massive quantities of toxic ink into the ocean currents. The ink emissions from your factories are killing off algae everywhere and causing irreversible coral bleaching. Huge tracts of reef from here to the Red Sea are starting to die off.” Another sigh. “I’m sorry Chris, but the data is irrefutable. Your company is destroying the world as we know it.”

Mr Christopher sat at his desk and listened to Dr Bloop’s revelation in complete silence (except for the occasional wayward bubble). Finally, he spoke. “Tell me then, Riley. What would you have me do?” The professor’s eyes immediately lit up. “Shut your factories down”, he replied. “It’s the only way we can save ourselves. Please Chris, I know what this company means to you and how hard you’ve worked to grow it, but I beg you to look into your hearts (two brachial, one systemic) and do the right thing. Here, take a look at these charts. Take my research! Read it! I want you to know that you’re the first octopod I’ve shown this to. Because I trust you to make the right choice. And because you’re my friend.” A heady stillness filled the room. The giant Pacific octopus then gently nodded to his old friend and made his decision. You know what? I think I will call security. With the prod of a button, two vampire squids burst into the room and wrestled Dr Bloop to the ground. “Tie him up to that coffee machine over there,” he carefully instructed. “Yes, yes, gag him as well.” That was when Christopher also remembered the local mafia owed him a few favours. He made a quick call to a number he kept on the very last page of his personal diary and within fifteen minutes, a trio of blue-ringed octopuses had arrived to take Dr Riley Bloop away for good. Christopher requested that they destroy the research papers and send the professor up to the surface to be turned into sannakji. Sannakji was a quirky seafood dish served in Korea, where live octopods were sliced and seasoned with sesame seeds before being consumed alive, even as their arms squirmed and struggled between chomps and chews. Hm. People are strange, mused Christopher as he watched the mafia drag the professor into the parking lot.

The next morning, Mr Christopher Hulu, CEO of Kraken Industries, came to work, clutching his morning paper. He greeted the brand new secretary sitting outside his office and she reported that someone had called just a few moments earlier About Some Job Being Done. Content with himself, Christopher swum into his office to read for exactly five minutes. The domestic headlines were dire (as always) but Business & Finance provided adequate relief. Just as he anticipated, his Atlantic Counterparts were experiencing a momentary dive in their stock prices. But then he shook into a bubbling rage when he saw the football score. 3-0. ”Bugger me,” he said to no one in particular, “Spain really needs to pick up their defence.”

THE END.

Showerhead

2016 · Mingji Liu

Late Sunday morning,
My showerheaded
Mind stirs and treads
On woozy bathroom
Tiles.

I reach for water
And it rains a night entire
Upon my crown.

Where had I been?

Dinner party,
Too much wine,
My friends had prodded again-
Why I was single in this world.

Yes.
That’s where I had been.

The panic rose like
Wine in my throat.

Daylight, fresh,
Coys from my
Bathroom curtains.

I stand, stolid,
Fumbling for shampoo.

Starving to death on some kind of atom-blasted moonscape

2016 · Mingji Liu

THERE’S a devil on my chest
there’s a devil on my chest
and every bone has cancer
and every bone has cancer
and every bone has cancer
and every bone has boo hoo
there’s a devil at my breast
there’s a devil at my breast
**and everyone wants answers
and everyone wants answers
and everyone wants answers
and everyone wants answers
**there’s a devil at my breast
there’s a devil at my breast
**and every whale has cancer
and every whale has cancer
and every whale has cancer
and every whale has cancer
**there’s a devil in my chest
there’s a devil in my chest
and yet nobody answers
and yet nobody answers
my CALLS.

Rrrrrrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnnnnnrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Swain and Swan

2016 · Mingji Liu

Swain and Swan,
Germ and Gem,
Lice and Lady,
Cob and Pen,

Dirt and Dove,
Cough and Cup,
Worn and Warm,
Private and Professional.

In old growth Gippsland,
A shining gum passes.
Estoy perdido,
Perhaps.

Even so,
With my awkward red heart,
I thank you for letting me know.
Everything will be found in the end.

Ten things I’ll do if Trump wins the presidency and/or if my hay fever gets any worse

2016 · Mingji Liu

Ten things I’ll (probably) do if Trump wins the presidency and/or if my hay fever gets any worse:

1. Sit in my bedroom with curtains drawn, slowly sipping scotch.

2. Pull a sickie and watch Netflix. Claim it was the 24-hour flu.

3. Find a perfectly sculpted rose blossom and crush it beneath my sweaty, masculine feet.

4. Wear a gas mask when outdoors. Pretend to be a shitty, bargain bin Stormtrooper.

5. Manufacture crystal meth, Breaking Bad style, from my inordinate stockpile of pseudoephedrine tablets.

6. Rob a bank with a jar of hummus. Assumption: Bank tellers are deathly allergic to chickpeas.

7. Listen to In the Aeroplane Over the Sea in reverse. Find all its subliminal satanic messages.

8. Keep sipping that scotch. Go away. I don’t have a drinking problem.

9. Renounce the English language and fulfil my lifelong dream of becoming a French hot air balloonist.

10. Start a new age cult that worships those aquatic iguanas that live on the Galápagos Islands and get eaten by snakes all the time.

townFOLKFEST

2016 · Mingji Liu

town:FOLKFEST
town:FUNDRAISER

tall white men beard tall white men
on skin on cow on wine on field on hen

on .tippy.trippy.toes. she kisses his cheek
hashtag:cephalonia
hashtag:Lebanon

that big northern(NOSE!)
freefreckle peak

#crowsfeet #toothpeck

#chocohair #vultureneck
~horse~rider~ ~whip~speaker~ ~fucking(NOPE!)~
so they all share her face?but how do they cope?
«SO WIPE-THAT-FROWN»
«AND COME-ON-DOWN»
«TO YACK-AN-DAN-DAH*»

(iknow im fucked,this is
probablyslander)

give a little twirl and find a couple.
give us a giggle and make a mumble.’

and as she reads this,don’t make hate in your pants
*Just remember,mate:

You we’re the only chink
at the Collingwood Bush Dance.

Waikato

2016 · Mingji Liu

The travel wiki was right: violence is general over New Zealand. Her dangerous spirit reaches even the Waikato region, here in the North Island. All the way from Coromandel to King Country, from hillock to highway, there is a slakeless brutality that rocks and rives the land.

Exhibit A. The Waikato River. A shock of greenblue, wide veined and livid cold, that slithers from the jaws of Ruapehu into the belly of the Tasman Sea. Be wary of its treachery! Observe how its slothful meanderings can, as suddenly as capsize, give way to strangling, rock strewn rapids.

Exhibit B. Huka Falls. Even the Waikato River must eventually face the mob justice of nature. As the river is forced into a narrow trench of volcanic rock, it is torturously metamorphosed and emerges a screaming cascade. A heaving roar. A thundering white. An endless storm of crystal blue.

Exhibit C. Pohutu Geyser. For this is what happens when the agony of the undersea can be contained no longer, when the boiling crucible beneath Te Puia explodes through pores in the earth. A jet of silica and scorching ecstasy that becomes momentarily skyborne (30m, in all) before weeping back down the geyser’s ghostly white terraces.

There are scenes of violence riddled across the Waikato region. Lake Taupo. Swollen. Light-stabbed. Craters of the Moon. Smoke-haunted. Desolate. Whakarewarewa Forest. Blood-barked. Intemperate. Even fern and moss whisper of its lawless actions. Countless.

The travel guides are usually right. Chaos reigns this country. Hear the bellbird? See the fantail? Watch them flicker, little sufferers in the trees. They are performing an elegy for each day. Every day. All day. A new day to bring colour over the ravished, unravished earth.

Wallpaper cuttings

2016 · Mingji Liu

Take a dusty cellar knife,
To stab the bedroom paper.
Plunge it into floral beige,
With shrill, butcher slashes.
Criss-cross and strike it true,
So sap bleeds from every cut.

The first slice is the hardest,
Against the paper dermis.
Second slice is root music,
Of boys crunching acorns.
Third slice, a down-hall girl,
With candle jars and vinyl.
Fourth and fifth come hazily,
A repeat of your stories:
Like the time you swallowed
Shampoo for 5 dollars 50,
Or collected 100 cicada shells,
And glued them your wall.
Six to seven are sadder cuts:
About cycling into car doors,
Or doctors saying ‘dystrophy’,
Or the day the sun hurt so bad
Your skin cried with snowflakes.

Peel the soggy wallpaper,
Drunk on mildew sunspots,
Kill its sticky cloud banks,
Till the room is naked glue.
This is all I’ve known,
And all I’ve ever wanted.
So why deny the flaying?
Why deny the flayer?
For even if I could stop,
I’ll never see the other side:
People stirring through the sky.
People finding homes tonight.
While I’ll be still right here,
An old man taking cuttings
With a penknife.

window washers

2016 · Mingji Liu

you can almost be fooled
into snow flash in May
this heart of Melbourne CBD
when white fragile foam
swirls and flakes
like icy dervishes down
our dull dull double glaze

you can almost taste
(From a slowcomfort cornerdesk.)
the dizzying wind the leaden sky
the ring and edgeless fall
as they sway in high rise cradles
jump suited squee geed hard hatted
lurching in defiance to
the godless gravity of towers

a scrape a squeak and tap
against this suited tower all
a defiance that leaves only
sleepy sheens over our double glaze
And puddledarks the groundfloor.

Y’s song

2016 · Mingji Liu

the name for flower in Sanskrit
is
is
beautiful.

your dress,

freckled
with
sunlight,

paintbrush black.

as if
to name a flower in Sanskrit
is
only

if only,

{aphasia} {ii} sonnet

2016 · Mingji Liu

{on wanderlust and hiking}

fellow peregrin, wherefore will you march?
will you seek peace alone in a desert?
seize victory atop a mountain’s arch?
or simply wander until your feet hurt?

stumbling up a creek bed in worn-out boots,
sleeping under stars with backpack pillow,
munching muesli bars and sticky dry fruits,
bracing raging storms in tents that billow.

so why follow the trail that never ends,
towards sweat and flies and tears and no rest?
is it because you want to catch new friends
and through battles, become the very best?

because *POKÉMON, GOTTA CATCH ‘EM AAAALL!
See that Zubat? Go toss your goddamn baaaall!
*

{sonnet} aphasia {i}

2016 · Mingji Liu

{on solutions to income inequality}

in the future, if tory’s ban the poor,
we can rejoice that london smells sweeter.
if tomorrow, east end starts to teeter,
we can relax with coffees rich and raw.
some may wait, or pray for a force majeuer,
some only dream a city completer,
but urban blight, we must seek to treat her.
so let us rise up, wage poverty war!
strike the ghettos, like needle to a hem!
break beggars like mosaics! shoot-to-kill!
of the lower classes, none will survive…
WE WILL EAT THEM ALIVE, WE WILL EAT THEM
ALIVE, WE WILL EAT THEM ALIVE, WE WILL
EAT THEM ALIVE, WE WILL EAT THEM ALIVE.