I Dreamt I Was Watching a Disaster Film
I dreamt I was watching a disaster film.
I bought popcorn and picked my seat—slightly left of center—
No one had brought a kid along.
Anyway, this wasn’t real.
I dreamt I was watching a disaster film.
I bought popcorn and picked my seat—slightly left of center—
No one had brought a kid along.
Anyway, this wasn’t real.
Close up: a Mumbai sports shoe factory, a child worker.
He’s learned Math, the English alphabet, this world and the third world,
His bleeding fingers a red pen correcting his worth.
The frozen river, in its bottomless depths
Completes its burial rites.
Wide shot: scorching winds blow, wafting
Resounding farts from corn-fed cattle.
At this moment, someone called out:
This is blatantly an art house film!
Such dreary storylines—
You’re killing me here.
The film drew to a close, a hundred years had passed.
Production credits began their crawl. We slowly departed.
Everyone seemed immensely satisfied
That their names appeared right at the end.
Un Sio San is a writer from Macau. Her poetry has been collected in Exile in the Blossom Time, Wonderland, Here, Naked Picnic, Song of Immigrants, and Bitter Lotus Seeds.
Jeremy Tiang is a novelist, playwright and Sinophone translator. Recent translations include Liu Xinwu’s The Wedding Party, which was shortlisted for the National Translation Award, as well as novels by Zhang Yueran, Shuang Xuetao, Lo Yi-Chin, Yan Ge and Yeng Pway Ngon. Their novel State of Emergency won the Singapore Literature Prize in 2018. Earlier this year they were the Princeton University Translator-in-Residence, and served on the jury of the International Booker Prize. Originally from Singapore, they live in Flushing, Queens.