Snow Down in Hong Kong — Blackbird Archive

← v12n2, Fall 2013

Ergo-gangs are raping the seafarer Bernadette

in the blue clay field,

sparks flying from the mouth of the night bear

where Istanbul is washed in riversongs

of men punished before, during, and after judgment,

or is this just Aquinas bloodied, peeing

in arcs into the darkest brush bucket—

canaries made of yellow sugar on the tree branch,

a woman weeping into an open sandwich,

never had to cheat at canasta, their lives

replete with dead Greeks,

their bodies being washed in fragrant oils

by the mystery thieves of data. It was slavery then, Aquinas,

with prawns and gongs, it was wrong then, you bastards—

it was sundown in Hong Kong.

violence war history

Norman Dubie

Norman Dubie’s newest collection of poems, Robert Schumann is Mad Again, will be published by Copper Canyon Press in 2019. His work, which includes books of poetry and aphorisms such as Lumen de Lumine (Paper Press Books, 2017), The Quotations of Bone (Copper Canyon Press, 2015), The Volcano (Copper Canyon Press, 2010), The Insomniac Liar of Topo (Copper Canyon Press, 2007), and Ordinary Mornings of a Coliseum (Copper Canyon Press, 2004), has been translated into over thirty languages. Dubie has won the 2016 Griffin International Poetry Prize, the Bess Hokin Prize from POETRY , and the PEN Center USA Award for Best Poetry Collection in 2002. He has received fellowships from the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Photo by Matt Valentine