canal walk
Where I live, in the north of the city, the territory belongs to Kisruh, QZR, the Uncontrolled. That is if you believe the graffiti frequently adorning the sides of walls and buildings. Their rival is Joxsin, JXZ, the Crazy Boys, a Muslim gang from the south. A third group is Cina Anti-Jawa, CAJ, the ethnic Chinese gang in the eastern parts of the city. I’m told that youth gang violence was pretty bad here a few years ago.
a motorbike backfires
I hear on the national news that the crime rate in the country is going up again. I worry it is a pretext for the security apparatus to re-launch their campaign of murdering reputed petty criminals as they did in the mid-1980s. Some people here tell me the police murders have never really stopped, and defiled tattooed bodies still occasionally turn up in the rice paddies or floating in the rivers.
in the soft evening air
writing has appeared in A-minor Magazine, Book of Matches, Frogpond, The Heron’s Nest, Kelp Journal, The Metaworker, Otoliths, Under the Bashō, and other publications. He lives in southern Wisconsin.
