Pride of Place: A series in which teaching staff and students from the English Department reflect on a place in Hong Kong. [Read all entries.] [Revisit the “Pet Sounds” series.] [Revisit the “Headspace” series.] [Revisit the “Ongoing” series.] [Revisit the “Interrogative” series.]
Tap In, Tap Out
It was the blue wall on the Black Cloth
that was speaking. A small, exposed
patch of bricks was enough
to be my friend: the back of a sumo
with a zit (a green nail) on one cheek,
swimming not any further away
from my wooden stool, just slightly
deeper into the—It was the Grand Cru
that was speaking, of “a sourness
as in a charity shop full of
dusty jumpers”. Was trying to impress
you, who spoke of the “cloud scratcher”,
“hoch hoch hoch hoch haus das ist!”,
which made the sides of thighs (“Hi,)
bags under tables, and the sweeping
backs of bartenders speak (“so now
you’re back to your favourite seat”)
of the gentrified crowdedness
of some Europeans to my left,
presumably on a first date, and the
Cantonese men to my right, who were
rambling about families and
investments, as to which I had
different notions.
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Cheng Tim Tim is a graduate of the Department of English and Department of Education (Class of 2016). She has problems with proper nouns. She is one of the founding co-editors of EDGE. [Read all entries by Tim Tim.]
Department of English, Hong Kong Baptist University 