Aiden Heung

Flute

Fremdes Lich am Horizont by Bruno Kurz

The notes come like a wash
of falling pearls but better arranged,
patterned like a river or a sea
or any bewitched moments
of a wintry night. My skin feels it,
electric like a touch, like water turning
instantaneously ice
and cold is the nocturne he plays
under an overpass as he leans deeper
into the light that flocks the air
with lacy brown. But the music
is a jellyfish moon rattling the ocean.
I’m suddenly nostalgic,
before me a wave of yesterdays
I never knew how to respond to.
I’m a hand reaching into the dark,
a voice asking where and who.
I’m again the boy who sat alone
day after day under a star-studded sky.
But I’ve forgotten what ached.

He stops playing,
packs his flute in a leather case.
I keep my window open.

 

About the writer:
Aiden Heung is a Chinese poet born and raised on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau. He writes about his personal past in a Tibetan Autonomous Town and the city of Shanghai where he currently lives. Other themes include ancestry, nature-human relations, queer culture, the dehumanizing force of the city, politics, and his imaginary wonderland. Heung’s words have appeared or are forthcoming in Australian Poetry Journal, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Poet Lore, Hobart, Parentheses, Barren Magazine, Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine, Potomac Review, among other places. Heung is a reader of world literature.

Image: Strange Light on the Horizon by Bruno Kurz (1957-). No medium specified. No size specified. 2015. By free license.

 

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