This time of year, early spring

Announcing: upcoming readings (and a performance) in Macau and Hong Kong

If you’re in Macau tomorrow (that’s Saturday, March 29), my band Poetry x Music will be performing at the Dom Pedro V Theatre, the first Western-style theater in China (built in 1860), as part of the Macau Literary Festival. And then on Sunday I’ll be part of a panel discussion marking the final event of the festival.

On Tuesday, April 1, I’ll be in Hong Kong to give a poetry reading at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club. Contact me if you’re interested.

Finally, I have a date for my next reading in Beijing: Saturday, April 12, at 3 p.m. at The Hutong. Will be sharing mostly new poems that afternoon.

~

This time of year, early spring

when the wind blows
it translates the language of dry leaves

shedding old worries, sprouting
new ones, spreading like pollen

the year ahead promises
challenges: drought

or flood, new tax codes
or sweeps by urban management

assholes, crackdowns on things
you didn’t know existed

and all the while, pressure—
consumption consumption consumption.

and the cat was sad
on the rooftop, overdressed

in the freshly spawned heat
which menaced, pried with a heavy touch,

scratched the familiar.
when I write and the cat was sad

I mean I was, I who have
reasons for dishonesty

voices scatter in the heat
dressing down the dry leaves

listening very closely, on this rooftop
I have cause to wonder how little I’ve known,

whether dissolution and grief
were always so close