"Year of the Dragon"

1. Exculpatory grace
an atlas of storm damage
a humbug, donning gold
fixity of cutlass

folds into the name
full as a flank

high joy of it scrimmage
or exculpatory yeggfolk
a sort of braille
curviangular fanged

2.
A troth of lengths · spiralling loose
gold · in the moonlight herd gawking
no sum of mirrors · not this mall
i am spun in · cantrips despite
how slow · and entirely slough boiled

loops then · call them the price of have
such knowledge · benign equitant
Darjeeling · stars of the storm bourne
or occult jangada · dew-jewelled
this is what · it is to be theirs

3.
crack tharfcake inly
my dusk of ailerons soared

pools · mounted
veil Darjeeling · olive Antioch

with dark tharfcake · approaching the cusp of sloom
i waver

crack spitball inly

full as a flank a humbug azury thegn
high joy of it · tardy i enter


"Next to the collection of the Cultural Revolution, Chen saw a poster of Dietrich in Shanghai Express. This city seemed to be suddenly lost in a collective nostalgia for the twenties and thirties, an allegedly golden period of exotic and exuberant fantasies. Things from those days were being discovered and rediscovered with a passion." --Qiu Xiaolong, A Case of Two Cities (2006)


Gilligan's Hamlet. (The original glimflash.)