Lei Wang has been a science reporter in Hong Kong and a private investigator in San Francisco. She is now a dream coach in Shanghai for Chinese high schoolers while simultaneously pursuing her own writing.
LIGHTS, PUERTO PRINCESSA
In that practical small city,
they string lights on trees
for tuk-tuk drivers to navigate
the night. This is what the
tour guide tells us, but I don’t
believe her reasons quite
because the lights are prettier
than they need to be, bright gold
orbs instead of the virtuous blue
of efficient fluorescence. He,
ever the voice of reason, says,
“But it is bad for the trees.”
It is true the trees cannot sleep,
but if I were a tree, gold-orb
daydreams would be alright by me.
Somewhere on this island
a romantic is masquerading as
a city planner.
Waiting for Mammals to Grow Old
based on the true story of a Hong Kong tycoon
They say he imported large animals
newly retired from zoos. Giraffes
tired of craning and zebras wanting
to blend in. The things rich men do.
How sovereign even their whims.
Imported by helicopter, not the sick,
merely the slow dying. Even in zoos,
air-brushed lions. No grey manes
but silver-backed gorilla okay since
George Clooney. He could have afforded
young pandas, kept them in bamboo.
He took the infirm, not needing to, and
raised them a mountain from civilization,
his preferred distance of residing.
At the funeral, five hundred people
appeared, four hundred ninety-nine
surprised the others were there,
almost the whole of those still
living in that Luddite’s paradise.
Each one with mouth bursting
of the slippery ways he entered
their lives—a loan, a job,
suspicious miracles—and left
like the opposite of a shadow and
the definition of a fish. The secrets
that give us meaning: a giraffe
no longer bright of mottle
standing in the forgotten green of a
twilight estate, its years without
anxiety to come the simple
consequences of one old tycoon’s heart.
Not the grand surgery but the slow
unraveling. What we do when
there is no longer anything we must.