Aiden Heung

To A Woman Who Sells Flowers

Between the glass facade
that the heat of an August afternoon eats into,
and the asphalt road
that courses like a rumpled river,
she sits alone, her hair
slicked back to a perfunctory knot.
In her basket white against
oily brown, flowers
confess defeat, carefully wrapped
in an old newspaper.
What is she if not the last bearer
of the last pageantry
of a careless summer?
Before her perfumed men and women
pass by twos and threes
and a brutal sun tosses down
hot needles.

---

Still the Cleaving August

The street vendor pedals
in the summer heat
at noon every shade
expelled to the gutter
a patch of sewage
                                             still the
swelter in the cul-de-sac
of an unswept
lane.
Goods strung on the bike
                                        cleaving
the city in half
like a knife
into soft bread.
On both sides
steel silence
fused with glass blue,
                                        August
hammered into every facade
bruising his figure
into blurring dross.
And almost unnoticed
he pedals past the violent
violet
graffiti--

--
Aiden Heung is a Chinese poet born and raised on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau. He writes about his personal past in a Tibetan Autonomous Town and the city of Shanghai where he currently lives. His words appeared or are forthcoming in The Australian Poetry Journal, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Poet Lore, Rust & Moth, Hobart, Parentheses, Southern Humanities Review, O:JA&L among other places. He is a reader of world literature. He can be found on twitter @AidenHeung.​ Visit his website for more information: http://www.aidenheung.com/.