The Pink Apartment
Sai Kung
It was a low rise building.
The smell of cooked garlic
lingered between the floors,
laughter bursting
from the radios and jokes told
in my native tongue.
I was a stranger at home.
I walked among
the neighbors, quiet
as an unstrung guitar.
I waited for the bus, greeted
by commuters wary like moles
caught in the sun, nothing
could assuage them:
not morning’s pure light,
not their own dreams.
I tried to conjure your face
but I was distracted
while you,
like a wayward cloud,
sauntered off.
I listened to rain tapping
on the air conditioner, frogs
silent in the sewer,
my eyes wandering
to the wall where a gecko
mounted itself, playing dead
with its eyes open,
where the paint almost undone
by humidity and time
was blistering
like a tropical illness.
About the author
Pui Ying Wong was born in Hong Kong, lived in Japan as a college student, and now calls Brooklyn home. She has travelled to…
Read the full bioIssue 17 · March 2013
Table of contents
- From the editors
- Poetry
- Three Poems by R L Swihart
- Saw Instrumental
- Marketplace
- Numbers
- Two poems by Jim Burke
- The Pink Apartment
- Body-threaded
- An Evening in the Hamptons
- Two poems by Dalton Day
- On the way to Udhagamandalam II
- Eureka, California
- A Clip from Tomorrow
- Homecoming
- Amsterdam II : Scarring the Plate
- Two poems by Maria Apichella
- Late Summer
- Teksi!
- A Common Language
- Postcard Prose
- Travel Notes