#plastic flowers and joss sticks

[franzias-cave]

leader great at unifying fractured movement; bad at parenting 

[dve]

The portraits were of people from the shoulders up. There were little shelves inset at the bottom of each frame where people had left flowers, dried or plastic, and long burnt-out joss sticks in little glasses, or coins that didn’t look like any kind of legal tender Nona ever handed over in return for a bottle of milk. What distinguished most of the portraits was that they were paintings, and very old, all except for one: a photograph of a woman with ferociously red hair and an expression that said she was about to hit the photographer. She blossomed out of a thicket of dusty plastic flowers more numerous than those her painted associates got. Pyrrha was sitting in the special chair they always got out for Pyrrha. It was a hard chair made of bent metal tubing and scratchy matte plastic pads, and they always strapped a thing to her neck that made soft klik … klik sounds whenever she moved her head back and forth. This was because if Pyrrha made too many sudden movements it would blow out her spinal column automatically. It made a soft klik as Pyrrha turned back her head to look at them: she had been staring at the portrait of the lady who looked as though she were about to hit the photographer.

anyone else read this passage and feel the need to explode into a million billion pieces. anyone at all

[silkpunk]

Jobweek 1992

by Alfian Sa’at

(I was a scout then, 14 years old, looking for work)

Simple enough, to knock on sticker-patched doors,

To air some greetings, to blot my nervousness

With a smile, to wrinkle a nose at babies,

And let the chimes of my voice mask

The desperation of late hours.

Simple enough, until I wound up

In a satellite town, where the buses

Groaned in like debris,

With their flotsam of faces.

And in the distance,

Homes hanging from dingy windows,

With their crude beckoning lights.

I walked into a life, mute as a tomb,

And felt myself dragged up a pitch dark throat,

To the highest whimpering floor, where

I pledged a deep breath and took a step

Into the heartland.

Yapped at by bell-strangled pups,

And dismissed by red-chested men

With moustaches and gold chains,

Serenaded by televisions

At full blast. I reeled

Past joss-stick welts on the walls,

Some sun-bleached Arabic,

Strings of withered leaves,

These loud tributes to survival.

Every few steps, and one more home,

It was insane, this plurality,

This endless corridor of fuseboxes,

With rows of the day’s washing,

The hanging vines of fairy lights,

The potted jungles, the carcasses

Of school shoes, with their chafed tongues,

The walls grimacing into profusions

Of crayon scrawls.

But even worse was when I was led

Into the scenes behind the doors.

As they hunted for change

My voyeur’s eyes would rove over

The altars, three prosperities,

Cat coin-bank, crocheted tablecloths,

Plastic flowers, electric fan

On red plastic stool. Relieved

When they finally appeared

To unburden me of that guilty stare

Through the cluttered tunnels of their hearts.

This intruder, frocked in blue

In his own Halloween round,

Desecrating dinners, challenging hospitalities,

Insisting on charity from people who shook their heads

And slipped back into rooms too small for regrets.

In one night, I had stumbled, by accident,

on daughters plucking mothers’ white hair,

On men throwing slippers at dogs,

On children being tugged and yelled at

By voices sharp, and thin as the walls.

Walking home, in my pockets a nest

Of coins and notes, I knew that

No washing could scrub off the multitude of fingerprints

Emblazoned on their shiny, crumpled faces.