A reading of "Modernista"

From Cape Town poet Jacques Coetzee

I’ll have some new poems shortly, but first, if you’ll allow, I’d like to share a video of a reading of my poem “Modernista,” conducted by Jacques Coetzee.

I cold-emailed Jacques a few months ago when I knew I’d be traveling to South Africa. He’s one of the leaders of a poetry collective in Cape Town called The Red Wheelbarrow, and I wanted to make an acquaintance and see if I could join in any events. He said he’d organize one for me at Tokai Library. His reading of “Modernista” is from that event, on October 9.

Jacques is a prolific poet himself, and has a collection called An Illuminated Darkness, which feature beautiful and brutally honest ruminations on life as a visually impaired person. I actually first met him the day before the Tokai reading, on October 8, when he moderated the Cape Town book launch of We Met in Beijing at The Book Lounge. On our phone call, he said he was looking forward to arriving early at the venue to grab a glass of wine—and that’s when I knew we would get along. He said he loved “Modernista,” a poem that he read aloud to a woman he was trying to woo. Once again, I knew we would get along.

Jacques was, naturally, amazing during the book talk. He commanded the room, and made me, an outsider only dropping in, feel at home. He’s never been to China, but his understanding of each poem suggested—as the best compliment to the writer—that he read them carefully, and thoughtfully. Afterwards, we drank together with some friends at a nearby bar called Roxy Late Night, surrounded by younger carousers as if we very much belonged.

Jacques is also the singer-songwriter for the band Red Earth & Rust, which I’m listening to now. It’s wonderful.

Modernista

            After a Backseat Bingo show

The musicians step off stage
triumphant and flush,
chased by the ghost of the percussions they played,
needing no congratulations.

The notable and notorious of Beijing
have packed this bar everyone has gone to
because where else would they be?
Go on leading with the body

as if in heat, on heels
or in disappointment
into the breach, shouting to wiggle free
and succeeding, briefly,

before the next tray of shots:
Ganbei, salud, sláinte,
down the gullet and into the gut.
How you chant One more song

and evacuate into the electric night
with grievance, frantic for certainty.
Back inside, breaths and movements
bump, collective mass coalesces.

A Frenchman orders an absinthe
and praises Rohmer’s theatrics,
a journalist speaking German
discusses lockdowns and the Olympics,

a fiction writer pops a happy pill
and speaks to the blond:
their mouths move while nothing is said.
The beehive-haired guitarist,

the drummer with four buttons
unbuttoned, the couples
eying each other, asking
if it’s time. I am sensible,

says a man leaving early;
he was out too late
the night before, because
where else would he be?

Let us ravage what youth
we don’t need in this city
where no one grows up.
Let us chant One more song

till our souls tilt, till our throats ache.
Are you happy? someone asks,
as if we didn’t own our choices
made in China. As if we didn’t bask

in happy days, happy hours,
birthdays, Taco Tuesdays, buy-one-get-
one-free days, in whiskey sours
and vodka on the rocks.

Where else would we rather
run out our clocks,
with bar openings and club-
goings at dawn, always

a reason to get fucked
and strut in the imperial dust,
in the metallic smoke
amongst ravishing loves,

you beauties and beasts
laughing and sulking
in Beijing’s shared vanishing.
Hold me with your sway,

with one more song. The DJ is on.
Will you remember the show they played? Hold
a little longer, hold your dissenting, your disintegrating—
let us dance, reminisce, and rejoice

before our glorious forgetting.