Whoever Says Everything Gets Better With Age
Has Never Drunk Snake Wine

O,
The burden of sobriety.

旧 and 酒: Why do we drink
except to forget about the past?

My grandfather once
bit into
tapioca and cried.

My grandfather once screamed
at the sound of a car backfiring
into the abyss.

How does it feel to be lost
to time?

My grandfather sometimes forgets
and shouts at the Mazdas passing
on the streets.

My grandfather still calls it
shinbun, instead of
新闻.

My grandfather still sleeps next to
a gun, in the echo from the hills,
in which he fought sticks

Against
better judgment.

Was it anxiety
or nostalgia
that kept him awake?

The bullet leaves
the bones of the soldiers
of the 42nd battalion —

Through the white
winter halls
of the Municipal Building,

Through bloodied and marred
surrender documents, dotted
and signed,

Through the General that has
returned to
an orphaned crowd,

Desperate to reclaim
what he has
abandoned.

It lodges in Ah Gong’s solar
plexus, rattling in the
bones of a clock.

Learning the
hum of changing skies,

Dawn coloured
the whistle of wine,

My grandfather wakes at
6am and stares out at the
erupted vegetable field

Until he remembers
this day has been won.

A drink is still a drink until it
falls off the table at both ends.

What is time
but a soldier leaning

Into another
trust-fall

In the arms

Of a larger
gravity.