By Aiden Heung

Rare to walk into an empty village

in this country, where autumn

has fattened persimmons, each

hanging like an unlit lantern.

At nooks abandoned yellow

of chrysanthemums, phantoms

of fragrance frigid on cobbled

roads. A dozen houses,

wooden boards bolted,

whose termite-ridden grey

sinks into mottled walls,

where dust gathers on clayed

eaves. In the square, baskets

of little harvest, like inlays

on an undone fresco; only

a pillar with fading calligraphy

telling a story of tea, simple

stuff, traded across provinces

by merchants whose heirs

now, migrant workers. I think

I’m the only tourist here;

even my breath sounds stern,

like struggling water in drying

brooks; Otherwise, stillness burns

like useless incense for a quiet

god, who changes as the village

has changed. I too wear a face

of the past, like a marbled

thing, like this village

with a pale crumbled

veneer, time’s exquisite error.

Aiden Heung (He/They) is a Chinese poet born in a Tibetan Autonomous Town, currently living as a traveling coating salesman. If he is not on the road selling water-repellent solutions, you can always find him writing poems in one of the Costa Cafes in Shanghai. His poems written in English have appeared in The Australian Poetry Journal, The Missouri Review, Atlanta Review, Parentheses, Crazyhorse, and Black Warrior Review among other places. He can be found on Twitter @aidenheung.