Lavender Town: Three Poems by Sally Wen Mao

‘When you climb the stairway, / don’t shield your eyes / from the pixels, 30 hertz heat— / don’t shield your awe / from the ghosts of pretty prey’

Lavender Town

Don’t let the sour flowers fool you, child.

This town is a dead town. The tower tolls

to your trill, your heartbeat,

inaudible

to everyone except you. You listen. You hear.

Ghost notes, discordant leaves

clutter the earth, tin & rustle—

a lachrymose bird cries,

a graveyard glistens. When you climb the stairway,

don’t shield your eyes

from the pixels, 30 hertz heat—

don’t shield your awe

from the ghosts of pretty prey.

The ones you catch

when you’re alone and afraid.

Lavender Town, noble purple town, plumed, perfumed

dream of violet fields—can you hear

the killing machine sing? What secrets hide?

Why run? Why hold on?

You walk by the side of the road, biting an apple

as you wave your thumb—

blood sickles down, a rebel

you are, a hitchhiker, a tiny savant.

When you grow up, and the screen lights up

all your blind

spots, and you replace the dead

green cartridge

with a blank one of your making,

you’ll arrive, at last, at the final

battle. Maybe then you’ll find

that the game you’re playing

is a hack—you thought you were invincible,

and just like that, the boss

KOs you. And other times, you’re astonished

at your own breath—

you thought you were dead,

but your body was eternal all along.

Anna May Wong goes home with Bruce Lee

We meet while he’s filming The Orphan.

My young skin gleams. I’m in the future,

1960. My real self is alive somewhere,

but I’ve jinxed my own time machine to find

him. The bar sweats, sweet with salt, conk,

lacquer. The jukebox plays “Chain Gang”.

We were born in the same golden state, surrounded

by cameras, chimeras for our other selves. He admits

some applause could be cruel, then steals a kiss.

Only he knows this terror—of casting so huge

a shadow over a million invisible faces. The silver

of our eyes dims them, and for that I don’t forgive

myself. But Bruce understands. He knows the same

shame. On the dance floor, he cups the small

of my back, his hands cold like gauntlets.

I like how he describes a machete. How he hooks

his digits with my incisors, how he rips the skin

off bad memories, with just one lip, bloody apple,

and one battle has me pinned, saddled, on my spine.

In the aftermath, he reads me the poems he’d publish

posthumously—“Though the night was made for loving”

and “Parting”—how he kisses with both eyes open,

staring straight into me. A lot of nothing at stake.

At this time, my heart dead—little pigeon buried

beside the torn twig. He asks me to take him

with me, to the future. It’s the only place we can live

together, he ventures. I want to say yes. I want to let

the flush flood over and take him there, our own

happy ending. But I don’t. It’s not ours to own,

I say, and bury his silence with my mouth.

After Nam June Paik

Good Morning Mr. Orwell (1984)

We wake up to the era of a doom tube. Save

us, save us, save us—if our suffering

is broadcasted, let it be known.

Let it be collective. Let it be real, let it be

the future real soon.

Opera of our nightmares, today is the day

the heavens have promised: the day we survive

ourselves, move forward and fast. Farther and farther

the sky rumbles over us—faster and faster,

the transmissions, boomtowns, bodies in space:

New York to Paris, Berlin to Seoul, WNET

to Centre Pompidou, we broadcast

our triplicate shadows, our robot politics,

we install our souls, our space yodels, our rebel kisses,

into your television set, your cell phones,

until the moon rises

into your kingdom

and drowns in the cove of our satellite waves.