Assistant Editor Rome Hernández Morgan: There’s a feeling of inevitability about trains—a stubbornness in the way a train moves along its track without deviation. Aiden Heung manages to capture this intangible quality in his quiet but powerful haibun about travel. I appreciated the precise detailing of the poem’s emotional landscape and its haunting quality.
Next Stop, Beijing
Bunk beds stack neat where greased sheets splay, worn down by boxes and bags of god-knows-what. Between yesterday and tomorrow, railway tracks sprawl their rust-eaten tentacles. A dull moving picture in the window and my face a dried mango. Three ladies wear days of travel in every fold of their spring shirts. I’m in no hurry. At the destination, no one awaits. I want to ask my fellow passengers about their trips, but who am I to demand intimacy? Perhaps I can show them these brick-sets-to-sell in my toolkit and tell them that I’ve been denied entrance to many doors. Instead, I hold my words like something too bitter to swallow. We are drifting leaves bound to various shores, sharing, by chance, the same stream. I choose to wander and meet myself in every passing face. Hello, do I know you? I’ve torn myself from this moment and ripped a hole. I want to fall as a maple leaf falls. People will remember the fire.
The city looms near.
A cadaverous sun—I
can’t but must go on.
Aiden Heung (He/They) is a Chinese poet born in a Tibetan Autonomous Town. He is a travelling coating salesman in Shanghai but he has spent more time in cafes reading and writing poetry. His poems written in English have appeared in the Australian Poetry Journal, Missouri Review, Poetry International, Crazyhorse, and Black Warrior Review, among other places.
For more miCRo pieces, CLICK HERE
