MEGAN MCKINLAY
In China
I look for poems: all
the usual suspects present
themselves,
tai chi in the still grey of
morning. I give it a try:
brittle bones lift out of
themselves,
arcing smoothly through the
buzzing air.
In China, a pink-eyed albino
squats on an overpass, glassy
eyes
moleing the air, fogging at my
footsteps.
What then, if not this? I take
some crumpled notes,
place them carefully in his
bowl.
But we have no words
between us, and without them,
there is nothing.
I make a start: there is no
language beyond words
and eyes, not here, where …
In China, I sit seven storeys
above
the city, body pushed against
double-glass,
willing it to crack. I will
plunge then,
into something, split the city
wide open,
force the poems to reveal
themselves:
this fierce headlong spiral
into language.
I plot my descent.
In China, one foot on the
plane,
and my body says home. Now this
is when poems breathe
out of me, filling the cabins
and crawl-spaces, clamouring
tightly
into overhead lockers:
that man with his …
that girl with her …
Is this what it takes, to find
the poems of away –
a first sight of home?
And so I begin.