Hoodlum
When they arrested him,
Still sated on grandma
And lying in her bed,
He protested at once
And called it entrapment.
For if the little girl
Had never mentioned her,
He certainly would not
Have thought to eat her up.
Yet no one believed him.
Months later, she wrote him
In prison, announcing
Her impending wedding
To the young woodcutter
And thanking him for it.
How else could she have met
Such a nice man, always
Taking grandma baskets
And going nowhere else?
The wolf was horrified.
Tongue Geographies
I
We lost her at Dover’s white cliffs:
Because globalisation means
You are free to experience
Rejection partout dans le monde.
(Global citizens just possess
Better passports.) The officer’s
Headshakes translating sans erreur,
She is resigned. The rest of us
Sway between Dover and Calais,
Whispering about her bad luck,
Silently congratulating
Ourselves on our travel agents.
II
The ferry is mongrel. I catch
Smatters of French as I wander
Alone through its bowels, tempted
To inflict my rusty accent
On someone, just to surprise them
And watch them try to reconcile
My skin with my speech. Cravenly,
I hoard my thoughts, translating them
Back and forth in mental safety.
Enfin, je ne sais pas pourquoi,
我也不知道为什么，
And finally, neither do I.
III
I listen to them laugh at (with?)
You, still unable to decide
Whose side I am on. After all,
I am a person who bristles,
Ever so slightly, when someone
Tells me that I speak good English,
So why should I fault their sneering?
Now we are roommates in Paris:
You, doubly alienated
From English tour and French city,
I, needing the Korean for
‘No, trust me, I do not hate you.’
Ringmaster
If you are reading these words, I know two things about you:
Your coffee said, ‘Drink me until he is gone.
Here at the bus terminal of your marriage,
The buses leave one by one; the last shakes a tambourine.’
Your coffee says, ‘Drink me until I am gone!’
One and two and three and four: give a slight knock on the door.
Buses pass your house one by one. Each shakes a tambourine
At the milkman or mailman to psych them up.
One and two and three and four…then his slight knock on your door.
Mouseholes gather in houses; mouseholes do that.
So will the milkman or mailman fix things up?
Will they mention your finger’s tanline, or has it faded?
Your mousehole gobbles houses; mouseholes do that.
All those animals fit into your nights despite your ring.
How many before the tanline on your finger faded?
It has been a year since I left this circus.
All my animals fit under the light, within the ring.
Lunchtime habits die hard, harder than mice-teeth.
It has been a year since I joined the circus,
And I almost believe I have never been happier.
Lunchtime habits are hard to break, like mice-teeth
That ripped his jeans to Alaskan archipelagoes.
When with me, you claimed that you had never been happier.
I still found a stranger’s clothes in the hamper.
Those rips in his jeans, Alaskan archipelagoes,
They were the bus terminal of our marriage.
You thought I would not find them in the hamper.
If you are reading these words, I know two things about you.
Sav(i)o(u)r
A burnt pancake will not
make me abandon you.
Repairing such mistakes
helps you to carry on.
Make me abandon you
if that is what you need,
helps you to carry on
believing in yourself.
If that is what you need
in order to survive –
believing in yourself –
who am I to protest?
In order to survive,
pancakes will not suffice.
Who am I to protest
though? This is your kitchen.
Pancakes will not suffice.
Even you must see that,
though this is your kitchen.
Our life depends on it.
Even you must see that
we were not who we are.
Our life depends on it:
choosing to make changes.
We were not who we are,
and that is our problem.
Choosing to make changes
can cost a lot to fix,
and that is our problem.
Repairing such mistakes
can cost a lot. To fix
a burnt pancake will not.
Ian Chung’s work has appeared in Dr. Hurley’s Snake-Oil Cure, Foundling Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, The Cadaverine, The Misfit Quarterly and Unthology No. 3 (Unthank Books, 2012), among others. He reviews for various publications, including Rum & Reviews Magazine, Sabotage Reviews and The Cadaverine. He is the founder of Eunoia Review, and is also on the editorial teams of Epicentre Magazine and The Cadaverine. When not editing/reading/writing, he watches more TV than is reasonable for one person and harbours dreams of writing a multi-volume science fiction saga.