Xing Zhao is a writer and translator. He has written about contemporary art, culture, design, travel, and LGBTQ for publications including Architectural Digest, The Art Newspaper, Time Out, and OutThere. He is interested in ideas such as memory, exile, elsewhere, and displacement. He lives in Shanghai — a city that is not his home and writes in English — a language other than his native tongue. He is working on a collection of short stories and a long story, both with sentiments that permeate his poetry.

 

I Smell Him

 

I smell him

on me,

on the blue-black corduroy jacket

I’m wearing,

in the back of the closet where it’s hiding.

 

His smell stays with me

as though he was sitting next to me,

eyes

behind his thick black-framed glasses

a quiet gleam,

lips fluttering

are wings of a butterfly

dancing in a rainforest of luminous green.

 

What is he thinking? I think,

his mind is a storming sea,

drawer inside drawer

insider drawer

to which I do not have a key.

Mandalorian, Skywalker, and Jedi,

KAWS, The North Face, and Noguchi.

Words pour out of him and

I feel dizzy.

I wish

he’d stop speaking.

Does he know

I’m not at all listening?

 

The jacket

is the color of night

where blue enters black

and black becomes blue,

nocturnal animals sing songs,

rivers run across fields.

 

Lingers the smell of him,

of green moss grown on spruce

the morning after rain,

of ink smudged

on fingers,

of bergamot

blent into black tea,

of tobacco and stubble,

of him sitting at the bar of the coffee shop

when the barista says,

“He looks so clean.”

 

I want to know

if he knows

that he smells of rain,

of spring,

of a white T-shirt

billowing on a line in the wind,

of arms wrapped around my back

squeezing so tight

I hear a crackle in my spine.

 

In his jacket,

do I smell of him?

knowing his knows,

thinking his thoughts,

feeling how he feels,

when he’s sitting across the table,

our legs so close

they are almost touching,

when I lean over his shoulder and

pick up the book he’s reading,

when we walk side by side

to the park,

coffee in hand,

the sun is gold,

when he so casually hands me his jacket

the color of night,

the scent of fire,

and says,

“Yours it is.”

 

~

 

Green Island

 

 

My eyes are full of blue,

my heart is full of blue,

in this seaside town where

sky is made of glass and

waters are turquoise,

people cool as sea breeze.

 

You beam your twinkly eyes

in this dazzling midday sun,

I have springs to my steps

looking for my coconut drinks.

You say, “This is like Europe,” and

I say, “It is Malaya.”

On this island of green,

palms idly swing.