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My father used to take me prawning late at night. Night has a funny way of making everything strange, so I wanted to write about the experience.

 

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Your hand on the steering wheel,

the treacherous night

only made treacherous by radio silence.

Sometimes, you speak, with

a condescension greyed by age,

but often, we sit, 

me staring at the

fireflies perched on lampposts

and you watching

the glow of engine-beetles,

barking your horn at those that fly a little

too fast.

 

Bread for the stray dogs

that circle like land sharks when we 

slow down,

the parking meter rising like a curtain

welcoming us into another realm.

 

Black water bubbles like a brook, 

goading the bobber into dipping

with each artificial wave.

 

Time sits down on a white plastic chair and retrieves a cigarette from his

cargo shorts.

 

I want to tell you—

The prawns here have already been caught.

They know the tricks up your sleeveless shirt, 

those that you trade with the man beside us,

industry secrets of an economy with unending supply.

 

If I strain my ears, I can even hear the swinging cricket fan 

creak its gentle disapproval, 

having heard of your infallible advice just over four thousand times.

 

But perhaps the prawns don’t remember. 

Maybe they’ve put Meng Po soup [1] in these

square bowls of ever-shifting darkness, 

such that with each clumsy bait dunked into their sky,

they shed once more into soft shells of naivety,

primed to swallow the stench of temptation 

without so much as a questioning twitch of their feelers.

 

In the end, I don’t tell you,

swallow the words down my hook-scratched throat, 

even though they are honest.

 

Just let me soak in this silence for a little longer,

cross my legs alongside Time and admire our very own Naihe [2] bridge,

take after those prawns that like to play with our sinkers.

 

Here, where hunger is rewarded with a hook in your mouth

and fate is a piece of chicken heart, still dripping,

I wonder what kind of bait can make you stay.

 

Footnotes

[1] Meng Po(孟婆) is the goddess of oblivion in Chinese mythology, who serves Meng Po Soup on the Bridge of Oblivion/Naihe Bridge. This soup wipes the memory of the person so they can reincarnate into the next life without the burdens of the previous life. 

 

[2] Naihe(奈何) means there is nothing to be done, to resign oneself to (doing something unpleasant), to have no choice but accept (something unpleasant) calmly.