Prologue
Sam Cheuk
Sorry I haven't written you lately, winter is fast approaching, etc. Neither the emperor or the students have any clothes. Fortified behind their respective walls of the legislature and a campus, the police in between are prying at a resolution, trying to storm a burning bridge while students stand pat or slip into sewer grates. Beside it one of the city's arterial tunnels, connecting the island to the mainland, suspended, day 3.
Molotovs blossom everywhere. Overseas diners debate behind a glass pane, staff jamming wet towels under the front door, about the merit of a reporter who ran past, disappeared into smoke.
The PLA made a guest appearance yesterday, parading down a local street to clear it of its bricks.
I've been scribbling for poems, plucked off the streets last night a used gas canister I use as paper weight for luck, size of a cicada's shell. What's left inside don't smell so bad but I won't tempt the gods, ma.
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Sam Cheuk is a Hong Kong-born Canadian poet and author of Love Figures (Insomniac Press, 2011), Deus et Machina (Baseline Press, 2017) and the upcoming collection Postscripts from a City Burning (Palimpsest Press, 2021) on the 2019 protests in Hong Kong and its aftermath. He holds an MFA in creative writing from New York University and BA in English literature from University of Toronto. He is currently working on the second half of the diptych, tentatively titled Marginalia, that examines the function, execution, and generative potential behind censorship. #香港人加油 #StandWithHongKong