CEREMONY FOR TRANSFER OF LAND

 

                                                                            --Jia Zhangke’s 24 City

 

4 City                                                                                                                                               
For fifty years we have faces
we don't deserve. Then the
fitters are taking over everything.
All jobs or families, how many hands,
no rusty sultans.  Escaping everything,
hidden everything. Prince Precipice,
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ else ever. Otherlikewise:
Secretary Bird, Secretary Gain.
Factory Hollow built Factory Blank.
Cost on, cost off, year on year.

 

8 City                                                                                   

Visiting families, finishing middle school,
dancing only on time, not broken-, slow-
broken. Why not _ _ _ _ _ now, why not
when. The First Workers' Cultural
Palace has all the friends---ask them.
We still do a bit of that human at home.
Crumple thought yawn, fly away home.

 

12 City                                                                                               

WANTED: a better pyramid home.
Remember: no messing with the bosses
until there are ten times upon us: no
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ or catch cans for anyone.
Then: those things and villages for everyone.

 

16 City

That year: a clocking dalliance,
throwboats juddering, sound of the first stem.
I'm not sure Heisenberg was the me any more.
Husband rushed back ashore, couldn't find him,
many less another other one else---but where?
Smaller horses than the others' fewer houses.
Set a television on its _ _ _ _ _ _---voila!

 

20 City

If the _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ is like a _ _ _ _ _ 
_ _ _ _ _ _, the _ _ _ _ _ is its _ _ _ _ _.

The money we get has eyes for other eyes.

Cinnamon swimming pool: instant drinking::
Flavorless water cinema: cannot exist

His little flower called him little flower.
If you don’t know, you don’t want to go.
Know too: churchgoing clans are coming.

 

24 City

Also not a proverb: Don’t put on every sweatshirt at once.
Instead: Fill some fountains with grey bits of everything.
Psst. Under here. Suddenly you were now or never on a
train. You were very surprised by the RED chair. VERY
______________________________ by February thinking.

I spent my engine building semester in wet clothes,
on a poaching tigers, rattling dragons scholarship.
I was done quitting windows, but putting on uni-
_ _ _ _ _ belonged too long. Long ago. Long, ago.
Always   flashlights,   never   batteries,   seldom
weather, often both. On the ground, upside-
down, still picking apples.   Look!   All the
earth! Things we have thought and done
in the fire vs. Things we forgot and sung
in the cloud. For a while, I hung around
the king, but once the queens came
crawling from everywhere, rafters
came crawling too. Monks came
crawling. This proves it: those
were thin years for the falcon.

Now no-                                                            
body nods:                                                           
                                                      Ingots of
                                                               cloud,
                                                                                    pillar of
                                                                                     ROBOTS.

NATHANIEL OTTING