h o m e........

p a s t   i s s u e s....

s u b m i s s i o n s....

l i n k s

NICHOLAS WONG

TRIP ADVISOR

You, the travel guru, always pack
	everything – lime shampoo,
		flip-flops, nickel silver Nikon &
your true self, who throws popcorns at American
					elks at the zoo,
		mocks the flamingoes when they flirt
							like yoga posers. Back 
		
			in the hotel room, 103/F, the sky still looks
					irrelevant, that’s how I deduce
		loneliness has nothing to do with
										               		distance.


						It rains, you pride
	yourself on the privilege of height seeing
				the rain interrupt life down there. There –

						slowly, drop by drop,
		umbrellas lazy to close, a panoptical view of
								 fabric mushrooms. I fake 

I’m napping when you tell
			me about X & Y
				(who went to Mexico, where fireworks
	is tied around papier-mâché animals
							called Judas), so you can
				explore the city, alone, 
									
											farther than anyone has gone.
 			
		And when you’re gone, a smoke detector
				sheens on the ceiling, 
				a lonely satellite allergic to hate.  

A hermit must have checked into the same room:
		the DO NOT DISTURB sign is wrinkled.

								
									That night, Lost in Translation on TV,
		you love Scarlet Johansson’s buttocks
						(un)veiled 
								 by lace lingerie. They rest
					roundly in bed, her face out of frame,
		traversing the window. 

	                                                                                             452 users have rated 
                                                                 this hotel, 19 helpful reviews. On average,
                                                                                        this place is worth 4.12 stars:

			 ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ How can a star be 0.12 filled?
Is language the foundation of absence, 
				hieroglyphics included?


Guess what Bill Murray murmurs: [the] point
				is not that we can’t hear what [he] communicates,
				but that he communicates what can’t be heard


.		When we check out, we know
			where to go in the lobby, where
												
			you’ll learn to get
						used to oblivion, the second serial killer
									after cancer. If not, 

				I hope you’ve written the word SWIRL
							on your telephoto lens, so
					
					what we’ve done will look more vibrant, 
														compressed.

It’s not the pedigreed corgis they left
at the handover, but the effigy of the Queen 
on toothed stamps being self-important

in dusted albums. We bolted to banks to trade 
for new coins. We went to the West, away 
from communist coxswains, but were whittled

to sculptures called ‘second-tier citizens’,
second to terriers. Our being could start
a chapter in zoology: we’re inedible 

bilingual centaurs spreading swine flu
at the turn of century, we’re comrades
of a blue whale found ashore due to sonic 

confusion, caribous on a cruise to Malibu. 
Even what we used to remember migrated to corners 
invisible in brain scan. In Mandarin Oriental, 

India, a TV host devoured British scones 
and circumscribed cucumber sandwiches 
on his sun porch that looked over to rice fields. 

A butler next to him. He called the experience 
authentic. So were the bees buzzing in their air, 
sick of their queen too lazy to move. 

Nicholas Wong is the author of Cities of Sameness. His poems are forthcoming in 
American Letters & Commentary, Gargoyle, Harpur Palate, Natural Bridge, Redactions, 
The Pinch and upstreet. He is the recipient of Global Fellowship Award at ASU Desert 
Nights Rising Stars Writer’s Conference in 2012 and a winner of Hawai'i Review's 
Ian Macmillan Writing Contest (Poetry) in 2012. He edits the poetry section for Mead: 
Magazine of Literature and Libations, and reads poetry for Drunken Boat.