Poetry: A Lie and a Promise & Watching the Olympics (Two Poems Written on August 7th) by Tammy Lai-Ming Ho
A LIE AND A PROMISE
Missing people are missing
people too. The list,
whatever list, cannot be updated
fast enough
to meet everyone's imagination.
Some people have enough hurt
to debut newer hurt. There are exactly
two types of governments.
It must be nice to feel okay to speak
and then not speak and then speak again.
Are all your documents renewed, all in line?
Have you a nom de plume?
A lie and a promise
in Chinese is the difference
of half a character.
- 7 August 2021
WATCHING THE OLYMPICS
I dreamt that an argument with a spouse
meant elimination from the modern pentathlon.
When I awoke I realised
there was no argument. He remarked
on the cover of a crumpled book
on the bed. Postcolonial affairs of food
on plates of flags and hearts. What's new
these days? They threw hammers,
rode unclaimed horses, swam and ran
and ran to stay undead. There's intense
competition for trolling one's people. By noon,
a drop of condensation fell
from the ceiling. A race is faces rushing
towards a line.
- 7 August 2021
Tammy Lai-Ming Ho is a poet and translator of Chinese literature into English. She is the editor-in-chief of the Hong Kong-based Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, and a co-editor of the peer-reviewed scholarly journal Hong Kong Studies. She is also a Junior Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities, an Advisor to the Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing, and an Associate Professor at the Hong Kong Baptist University, where she teaches literary studies. Her books include Hula Hooping (Chameleon Press), Too Too Too Too (Math Paper Press), Her Name Upon the Strand (Delere Press), An Extraterrestrial in Hong Kong (Musical Stone), and Neo-Victorian Cannibalism (Palgrave).
Poems published as part of the Orchid Pavilion’s series Immaterial