Selected Poems of Zheng Xiaoqiong

Abstract

97 Translation translated by Zhou Xiaojing Selected Poems of Zheng Xiaoqiong 6 Age of Industry Japanese machines in American-invested factories carry iron produced in Brazilian mines; lathe tools from Germany reshape the coastal lines of France; store shelves in South Korea are filled with Italian labels Belgium is waiting in the corner to be sold; Spain and Singapore are being inspected; Russia has been put into the warehouse by transporters; Africa is standing in the open-air square as natural resources; orders from Chile are narrow & long like its territory; my Sichuan dialect is pretty old-fashioned; Xiangxi dialect is harder to understand; Minnan dialect from Fujian is chattingwith Taiwanese Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong is only a half-way station; if I’m willing I could arrange India, Afghanistan, and Pakistan in the vicinity of Australia, put Iraq and USA side by side move Israel to the middle of the Caribbean make England and Argentina shake hands, Japan and Mexico... In this industrial age, I am keeping busy every day for the sake of peacefully arranging the world in a factory. 98 Translation 6 A Female Migrant Worker: Youth Confined in a Seat on the Assembly Line Time opens its gigantic mouth, the moon rusting on the machine is haggard, hazy, opaque. The ominous danger in her heart surges like a turbulent river, the cliffs of her body collapse, dirt and gravel— tattered pieces of time—fill up the ferocious river of the female body. Confused tides no longer fluctuate according to season. She sits in her seat on the assembly line as moving products interweave with time, devouring her. So fast has she aged, ten years flown by like running water...immense fatigue drifts in her mind....For so many years she’s been keeping company these screws: one two turn left right, fixing her dreams and youth on a product, as she watches her pale girlhood running from an inland village to a coastal factory, all the way to a store shelf in the USA. Exhaustion and industrial disease accumulate in her lungs, stuck in her throat, her menstruation no longer regular, her coughing convulsive. In the development zone not far from the factory green lychee trees are felled, the machines by her side tremble....She rubs her red swollen eyes and places herself between the moving products on the assembly line. 6 Midnight, Rain At midnight rain falls along insomniac iron cages, like a flock of egrets with fluffy feathers, showering down moans on one hundred machines. Rain at midnight is sleepless, it pitter-patters by the machines, falling like nails, lumps, and strings stamped with labels—yellow ones from the USA, green ones from France gray from Japan, light blue from Italy...intertwined, overlapping with me, a migrant worker from Sichuan, gazing outside in reminiscence. Rain at midnight has a name like mine: wanderer, its water lines up with equal distance, whispering blueprints, computers, spare parts, iron nails Translation 99 silent like a youthful mute. Midnight rain falls on hands, legs, faces homesickness, sleepiness...falling, sharp like the teeth of the time-card clock with an iron stomach, devouring countless love, youth, and hours. Its rainbow color is a noun, looking for a home. Rainwater is moving in my blood, it’s a stranger-lodger, flown over from a dreamland in the deep night. I must stretch out my hands to hold it, hold it and my vulnerability sleep talk, faraway gaze; our late night in a strange country has the same moist blossoming childhood, the same silence like dark iron. Midnight rain and I stare at each other with deep feelings, our conversation, only I can hear. 6 Screaming Earthworms The fictitious world displays another layer of background to us, I move deep into dirt My smooth body, like a mirror of the world, lithe and fragile, pushing toward The depth of the city to put down roots. Buildings of the masculine metropolis glitter in my face Their glass walls covered with ads of female flesh. Erotic desire’s winter nursery is shockingly green The mask of the city cultivates in occluded arteries of me, a dormant earthworm at the bottom of society It has...