A Moon by Any Other Name
By Adele Evershed
When I lived in Hong Kong,
someone passed on an old Chinese saying—
May you live in interesting times.
I used to like the sound of that—
To live in Technicolor,
like Dorothy stepping into Oz.
I was young in an old/new place,
picking out experiences
like selecting dim sum from a cart—
never knowing which basket
held the fluffy cha siu bao,
or a lardy mound of chicken’s feet,
served cold. And it was never cold.
Winter virtue signaled itself
with plum blossom and jasmine,
camellias and the purpling orchid tree.
Even the February moon had a new name—
not snow, but budding.
And I was budding too—
flowering, shrugging off my shadows,
dressing in silk and brocade
spun in factories over the border,
attending brunches and balls
in places with the poshest names—
The Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club,
as if I were some debutante from the 1950s.
Those were fabulous times.
But, under the dispute moon
the old world cracked,
and a new order arrived like gunfire—
loud, monosyllabic,
leaving bloody footprints in the ash.
And in this time of destruction,
I wonder—what can one person do?
Tear her hair?
Gnash and despair?
Or take that hair and weave it
into a spell—
of resistance,
of creation—
or simply as a way to live
through these interesting times,
and get out
unscathed
on the other side
Adele Evershed is a Welsh writer who swapped the valleys for the American East Coast. You can find some of her poetry and prose in Grey Sparrow Journal, Gyroscope, Modern Haiku, Janus Lit, and Poetry Wales. Adele has two poetry collections, Turbulence in Small Spaces (Finishing Line Press) and The Brink of Silence (Bottlecap Press). Her third collection, In the Belly of the Wail is upcoming with Querencia Press. She has published two novellas in flash, Wannabe and Schooled (Alien Buddha Press), and has a forthcoming novella, A History of Hand Thrown Walls, with Unsolicited Press.
Artwork Source: “Courbevoie: Factories by Moonlight,” Georges Seurat. From the Public Domain.
The Turning Leaf Journal 