Lia Incognita is a Shanghai-born, Melbourne-based cultural critic, media maker and poet- provocateur whose work has appeared in Peril, Overland, Metro, Going Down Swinging, Social Alternatives and Melbourne Poetry Map. Lia presents radio monthly for Queering the Air on 3CR Community Radio. www.lia-incognita.com  

toisan

toisan
the armies and opium cored you

you spat out your children
like fireworks, sparks scampering
they bright and travel far

far enough to fade     out of sight

blowfish mouth deflated
spider babies kiting on silk thread
land them softly     softly
so they swell & full up
six strange sheets of earth
to the crinkled edge
long there over indigo water
cold roiling broth, the sea
sometimes as heavy
as bolts of dye-dipped cloth

they bright and travel far
mass of black-haired heads
lacquer bleached cliffs
and sallow beaches

they wear pigtails and tax
your boys, left wives and children behind
or were children, ahead of their age
chasing faraway time that can turn
to gold, if it all pans out right

they bright and travel far
tattoo steel scars right across
cut down carved up country
for thieves to ride hoofless
and make more rapid plunder

toisan
call the ocean to you
bid it carry your song
tell them boys, slow slow walk
soft your feet on foreign soil
hold tight to each other and jŭ tóu

hao jiu bu jian jia
they long time no see home