Hong Kong artist Abby Lee’s first solo exhibit at a|n gallery in Central articulates the existential condition of urban life in Hong Kong
childhood
What You Cannot Help Naming
Hiking with children, in a nature park at noon, the world is sparkling and synth-laden. Without trying, the sacred ibis of thought is upon them, as their fingerprints singe burn marks of poetry in the bark of trees. To them, pine needles are hairbrushes for unicorns.
Never Judge a Bourbon
By the memories of childhood Judge it by the way it makes you remember Being a childNever waste anything
On a Soccer Field Behind the Rec Center
Geese honkFlorida boundIt finally feels like late Octoberthe feeling of being left behind
A Scene from Cumberland Bay
Before his sister could budge him out of the way, Mendon climbsdown the rabbit hole to a window in the stars where everything worth seeing is hidden inside a half-devoured pine cone.
Home
a small childyet to master the written word knows beautywhen they seetheir mother walk through the door,home from work. A wordless setof hieroglyphics without their brain peeringthrough. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, The Angle at St. John Fisher College, and 3:16 Journal. George’s blogs, […]
Leaf Pile
Five months after you came into the world, you discovered the fawnbrown mystery of brittle leaves in December. Back when the winterswere late upon the earth. With your sister, you played in the pileof leaves like a small doll sinking intothe earth itself. Into a wormhole of foliage,and a cataclysm of autumn. Laughing atnothing but the act […]
How Children See
Children see melodies crackling, jumping, stretching,crowding, living like hummingbird bones taking offfrom a cage of suet. They see corn, millet, oats, and sunflowers, devouredinto the bloodstream, racingdown the arteries of a secret language, a communication flooding the transcendent, and the soft distance of headlights, as she waitsfor him to come back. Children see storm cloudsand distant planets, the tendons of […]
Where Deer Sleep
My three-year-old sonasked me where deer sleep.So I took him there. Steppinginto a space that is not meantfor fathers and sons, we founda ritual that has nothing to dowith us. An original grace. A serenitythat evokes the burden of redemption.That place where deer sleep, under aplumbeous sky, the pods of grass benttoward the center of […]
Putting My Son to Bed
There are moments so sacred that I can only share them in a poem. When I am reading tomy son in his rocking chair. Curious George and Sesame Street. Or when he begins to suck his wrist, that thing which sootheshim best. That’s when I know heis ready. Opening his arms into mine. I cradle him. He is getting too big to […]