Line 10 紫藤路 | Zǐténg Lù | 7 June 2018
We surface to the ad: pixelated nails, liquid droidoid roses, Sichuan Basin Jurassic oil play: Enter/Exit
New Earths hurtle our way, source-flowers time-lapsing from pools of crude in old coal beds (Jurassic oil play)
Upon this Server Earth I ask the birds their names. The First croaks shǐzǔniǎo 始祖鸟
Archaeopteryx rises shade-winged enormous over a white Geely sedan and the parking lot’s smoking bǎo’ān
The Second Bird, crimson propaganda woodblock Sparrow (Four-Pests-Campaign hungry ghost) silently mouths xiāomiè máquè 消灭麻雀!
Bird Three roars sovereign overhead, gleaming above desire path worn into engineered highway-shoulder woods, combustion everywhere
The Fifth Bird says Jīngwèi 精卫, dropping garbage from her beak into the Eastern Sea, racing to fill it so no more of us will drown
Bird Six, Fènghuáng 凤凰, hybrid sovereign Phoenix, posting self-as-viral GIF: legs of stag, now of crane, beak of rooster, snake neck
Face of swallow, breast of goose, tortoise back, tail of fish, golden pheasant head, peacock tail, beak of parrot
Swallow’s wings, Mandarin duck body, harmonized: tweets. So why live here? Hinton: “Expect nothing from your life”
Minford: “There is no body. He walks in the courtyard, unseen. No harm.” Muddy canal reflects vapor trails in milk-blue cirrus skies
The Seventh Bird, white crane in mud-red water, takes flight as I approach. (Crane, egret, heron — how would I know? I’m no ornithologist.)
The Eighth Bird? Marsh hawk? Falcon? Thin scimitar beak: waterfowl. Shanghai canal hawk: I know this because it appears to me so
Later, an elephant sprawls dead by a river in a mall as grass mud horses weakly meme cǎonímǎ 草泥马 in melon-scented kòngtiáo 空调 cooled air
Starbucks’ Chinese rival chains, coffee economy rains, air-con, mudslides, container ports, ever more rival chains: I sit, sip and write in one
As Zhūquè 朱雀 Vermillion Bird takes flight above the elephant corpse on the riverbank to bring us fire, heat, summer bearing down ablaze
