Hong Kong by Sue Blair
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Dough spinning
Noodle cutting
Warm curls of soup
Hot vegetables and meat
Spice stirred into air

Quaint shops house
Unique treasures
Graven daggers, pulp scrolls
Fine embroidery, jasmine candles
Racks of ribboned joss sticks
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Tambourines, hammered brass bells
Woven carpets, patterned silks,
Spiced wine, medicinal herbs
Wooden barrels of rice
Pungent sun-dried fish

Cinnabar flutes and carvings
Of animals nearly extinct
Forest wood ripped down
Transported across the globe
Transformed into painted maracas
By people barely living
Beautiful animal-skin drums
Dead wood for the masses to pound
A steady rhythm of annihilation
For anything alive
That is not human, a pet, or edible
Or a combination of the above

Shop owners,
Half their teeth gone
Smile to show
Parti-colored metal
Slapped on the remaining teeth

Island of man and his rubble
Reaching into the sky
Pouring out into the sea
The sam pans and floating restaurants
Hovels for citizens
Garish carnivals for tourists

Houses alongside an airstrip
All space is used
Like talking incessantly
Under fear of silence
Smog fills the open sky

Race horses taken for walks
Around and around rooftops
They have never tasted grass
One cannot walk down a path
Without jostling into another
The rare private car
Helps clog the traffic

Single males board
Stacked one upon the other
Like dogs in kennels
Drinking beer
In the common cooking area
The cinderblock bathroom
The only other place inside

Concrete and glass
Buildings are teeth
Rotting in the dead dragon's mouth
Children of the Hydra
Shells and skeletons
People carry caged birds
With them to tea and dim sum

Bone washers
Dig up the dead on the cliff
After a seven-year rest
To make way for others
You deserve a break today
But not for eternity
They call the litter in the water
"sea brush"
As if it were a living thing
Instead of the choker of same

This day, another pile of bones
Was washed and brushed
Removed to a rude clay jar
One day, the remains of "civilization"
Will be studied and catalogued
And removed to a museum