Russell Leong on these poems: Like apparitions or long-lost friends, these three unpublished poems—written more than twenty years ago in New London, Connecticut; Cuse, France; and Hong Kong, China—have returned to me through the efforts of editor Tammy Lai-Ming Ho. I had entirely forgotten their existence. The poems explore servitude and slavery, from the enslavement of African Americans to the plight of Chinese stowaways in the past two decades; the autism of a Hong Kong child I encountered in France; and the impact of modern capitalism on China’s bourgeois class in the early 2000s. What unites them is their rhetoric and an almost didactic, direct syntax—perhaps influenced by Bertolt Brecht’s use of both the vernacular and the lyrical. Though my writing has evolved, my concerns remain: the enslavement of body and voice, and the search for strategies of liberation—whether through poetics or practice.
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Ink, brush and stamp graphic by Russell Leong for “What Remains Most Alive”.
What Remains Most Alive
I.
What remains
most alive in memory?
The revolt itself.
New London, 1839.
Thirty-six Mendi Africans rise
against the captain of the Amistad.
What does not escape their ears—
chanting of iron chains,
brothers of metal, slaves of flesh.
What does not escape their skin—
sting of leather, lash of salt
upon each bloody back.
River veins surge through
broken shackles, turning the ship
back towards freedom.
The enslaved, now free,
fix their eyes across the Atlantic,
returning to Sierra Leone.
II.
What remains
most alive in memory?
The journey itself.
Los Angeles, 2001.
Space without air.
Air without space.
Two-legged cargo
stuffed into a container ship—
its name beyond their tongues.
Blinded fish
swimming in sweat, humidity, and silence,
conserving each breath.
Blood and salt ooze
from narrow eyes—
Chinese, dozens of them,
spilled onto the Long Beach Pier.
Defunct, without destination,
they turn their eyes inwards,
prepare to cross the Pacific,
returning to Fujian.
III.
Between two oceans,
between two centuries,
between three continents—
Brown bodies,
bruised, brokered, bartered—
by ship, plane, phone, fax.
What remains most alive in memory?
Blood and salt on tongues that speak
of the Atlantic and Pacific trade itself—
Of the journey,
the revolt, and the voyage back—
returning to themselves.
New London, 21 April 2001
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Ink, brush and stamp graphic by Russell Leong for “Delayed Tongue”.
Delayed Tongue
….. For Adrian, an autistic child
….. —Cuse, France & Hong Kong
Adrian: Stick out your tongue.
Listen to your heart.
Count the sweat beads under your armpits.
Measure the length of your footsteps.
Your body is delayed in five ways.
Your hair grows slower.
Your baby teeth erupt smaller.
You create words after others finish a sentence.
You stand after they have already stood .
You walk towards the light after
others have already entered the world.
So it’s just a matter of timing.
Equilibrium of mercury and gold in your hair.
A secret language trapped between your pinkish gums.
Birds, snails, and worms gravitate to your ears.
They whisper to you from dawn to dusk.
Your tongue is always delayed—
a blunt, warm creature hidden in its cave—
then, suddenly, it’s exposed to air—
Colour. Thickness. Dryness. Wetness. Smell.
A vessel of fourteen meridians
and four hundred acupoints.
Each steel needle finds a moist point
on the tender map of your tongue—
blood and chance, the memory of you.
A rivulet of saliva, a geode of crystalline teeth
mimicking other ivories.
After you eat,
silvery fish scales and grains of rice stick to your gums,
gleaming like chipped stars.
Adrian: Open your mouth and speak.
Cantonese , English , or Putonghua—
Early or late, any language will do.
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Sheep & Goats
….. —China & Los Angeles
The cashmere sweater has changed hands:
He puts it on the shoulders of Mistress Number One, Two, or Three.
You see, my husband has three women in China.
He profits, nicely, from the sweater factory in Shenzhen,
from the sweat of provincial migrants who spin
cashmere from Mongolian goats
into high-class Hong Kong sweaters.
By truck , they’re dispatched
from the mainland factory to that glittering, post-colonial island
of global boutiques and anti-WTO protestors.
(Even Korean farmers swimming in the murky China Sea
do not disrupt the factory delivery of
his new winter line.)
These sweaters in a dozen colours, sublime—
shades of lime, taupe, tobacco, ochre, and mulberry—
let him leave me softly every time,
not even in the middle of the night,
but gaily, on airplanes in the fresh air of morning,
from L.A. to Hong Kong in fourteen hours.
He doesn’t even want breakfast, he says.
Singapore Airlines makes tastier congee
or blueberry scones than I can microwave.
I agree, so I always let him go.
Mistress Number One,
twenty-two, is a coffee shop manager
in Dali, Yunnan. Blue batik walls
and Tibetan DVD chanting cater
to European backpackers and Japanese tourists.
She is beautiful in that border-town
way, I presume—pale skin, a few tasty moles
sprinkled over her slender figure.
He gives her cashmere in a rosy shade
that adds a pinkish glow to her skin.
She speaks high-pitched English, Japanese, and Chinese,
stir-fries herbs and cloudy mountain mushrooms,
and massages him until he comes.
Mistress Number Two
is ten years older—thirty-five, or so.
A rounder figure, but nicely proportioned,
divorced but educated, she teaches French
at Beiwai—Beijing Foreign Language Institute.
They meet in a restaurant, regularly,
not far from the institute that teaches
career diplomats and foreign service folks. With her,
I guess, it is a meeting of the minds.
They talk and eat finely minced pork dumplings, maybe a nice sautéed fish.
Then shop for translations of foreign books.
He’ll give her another cashmere sweater,
this time, taupe with a herringbone weave.
He seduced her, I think, when they met
on an airplane. He told her that his hero
was Camus, who first taught him the meaning
of existentialism when he was fifteen
at a boarding school in London.
My husband is not simply a cad
or a vulgar capitalist.
Far from that.
Fortunately for his mistresses,
he is not short, has all his hair,
& all the trimmings—steel-rimmed glasses,
Italian walking shoes,
the latest Blackberry,
a taut frame, and an American Express card tucked
into a sharkskin wallet.
No, he does not carry a black briefcase,
but a green canvas bag,
trimmed in leather, that he bought
at an eighteenth-century tannery in Paris.
In his satchel, believe it or not,
he carries tiny copies of the Koran,
the Bible, and the Diamond Sutra—
“in case he’s taken hostage,” he jokes.
He wears black Air Nikes with his linen suits
so he can run through the hills.
Mistress Number Three
is the same age as me—
forty-ish. I’m surprised, really,
at his diverse taste, but dismayed
that his affairs don’t revolve around sex, entirely.
She’s an inch shorter than me and darker—
the least attractive in my eyes.
But to be fair, she is tight-muscled and toned,
and teaches asana postures
to expatriates and bored broad matrons
who come down from Bowen Road to Central
for their miso tofu and sprout lunches.
A yoga instructor in Hong Kong
is a cliché. But she looks thirty,
they say, and gives tai-tais hope
that they can flex their breasts and reverse the years.
She’s into chakras, crystals, & tantric
touch techniques, her card says.
He gives her cashmere, but something
sexier from the Spring line—a sleeveless vest
for the contemporary, active woman,
the company website says. I wonder
how flexible they are in bed.
For the record, I’m not jealous.
But I don’t wear cashmere anymore.
I don’t want to be mistaken
for Mistress 1, 2, or 3
on some transpacific flight—
for a transgendered wolf in sheep’s clothing,
waiting for the kill.
I love my own life.
My lover, for instance, is with an NGO in Geneva.
Something like a high-class interpreter.
We meet every other month.
No, he’s not Chinese.
Yes, he’s younger.
No, he eats no meat.
Yes, he’s a virginal vegan—
eats fish, eggs, and caviar.
No, he’s not into Asian or African women, particularly.
But he’s into me—American Trojans, naturally.
And yes, I’ve joined the GAWAFF—
Global Asian Women Against Flying Fur.
I’ve donated my fur coats to charity,
banned all fabric, furniture, and rugs
made from horse, tiger, sheep, yak,
eel, bear, peacock, and all other
animals in my house.
So, I just wanted to let you know that
the cashmere sweater has now changed hands.
How to cite: Leong, Russell C. “Three Poems.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 10 Mar. 2025, chajournal.blog/2025/03/10/three-poems-leong.
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Photo of Russell C. Leong © Daniel Tsang, Hong Kong, 2O25
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Russell C. Leong writes about outcasts and outliers—those on the migratory margins of Asia and America. Phoenix Eyes and Other Stories earned an American Book Award for fiction, while The Country of Dreams and Dust received the PEN Josephine Miles Award. His work has been featured on the PBS series The United States of Poetry and included in numerous anthologies, with translations into Chinese in Taipei, Shanghai, Nanjing, Hong Kong, New York, and Los Angeles. His most recent published work, MothSutra, is a graphic poem with illustrations depicting New York City’s bicycle delivery men—most of them undocumented Chinese. It was performed at the University of Hong Kong’s Black Box Theatre in 2016 and at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City. Leong was a book editor and professor at UCLA and the City University of New York for 35 years. Born in San Francisco’s Chinatown, he attended both English and Chinese schools before continuing his education at National Taiwan University, San Francisco State College, and UCLA. Visit his website for more information.