Welcome to the first Spittoon Podcast! You can stream or download from the media player above, and the texts are printed here for you to follow along.
This is a bit of an experiment. As the coronavirus epidemic has prevented our usual poetic congregations in Beijing and Chengdu, we hope this podcast will keep up our community spirit by bringing Spittoon’s reading night right into your sealed up apartment, or wherever you may be or have always been in the world. If you are interested in reading on the podcast or have some feedback, please drop us a message on one of our WeChat chat groups.
Sara F. Costa
Sara F. Costa is a Portuguese poet. She has published five poetry collections in Portugal. Her latest book won the international award “Glória de Sant’Anna” for best poetry book published in Portuguese speaking countries in 2018. She has an MA in Intercultural Studies: Portuguese/Chinese from Tianjin Foreign Studies University. Her verses have been translated into several languages and featured in literary journals all across the world. As an emerging European poet, she was an invited author of the International Istanbul Poetry Festival 2017. In 2018, Sara worked in the organization of The Script Road-Macau Literary Festival and China-European Union Literary Festival in Shanghai and Suzhou. In 2019, she was invited to go to Kolkata, India to share her poetry in the second edition of “Chair Poetry Evenings”. She translates Chinese poetry into Portuguese and is currently living in Beijing coordinating events for the Spittoon Beijing Based Arts Collective.
萨拉·F·科斯塔，葡萄牙当代女诗人，曾获得多个奖项，至今已出版五本诗集，作品被翻译成多国语言出版，在国内外诸多文学杂志皆有刊出。作为欧洲新生代诗人，曾被邀参加2017年伊斯坦布尔国际诗歌节，2018年澳门文学节以及上海与苏州的中欧文学节。她正着手将一些中文诗译成葡语。2019年，她在印度加尔各答，参加了第二版的“主席诗歌晚会”。曾从天津外国语大学取得跨文化研究硕士学位。目前生活在北京，同时协助举办Spittoon文学社区的活动， 也是该社区旗下诗歌工作室的主持人。
trouxeram-me de tão longe
trouxeram-me de tão longe
como se aqui me faltasse sepulcro.
esta é a náusea indócil:
correr o mundo com uma janelinha,
brilhar por cortesia,
afiar o olfato.
de que trata o poema?
da piedade de seda,
da sombra da voz,
do peso da manhã.
trouxeram-me de tão longe
para me encontrar com o meu filho,
derramado no meu útero,
ser-rio,
escrito devagar entre continentes,
vivo e sôfrego e primitivo,
vítima de prata:
incolor como o amor.
trouxeram-me de tão longe
para pousar na mesma palavra
em que sou geada,
solo irritado,
deus irrigado.
Deus-corpo que desagua
na tua carne, filho, que é a minha,
oculta nas mãos perpétuas.
de que trata a vida?
dos amigos inesperados,
dos homens em fragmentos,
dos passageiros em combate.
serás o guerreiro que hesita,
a verdade e a mentira,
a lembrança enfurecida,
a desordem pura,
a janela mais justa
e a viagem maior.
they brought me from afar
they brought me from afar
as if I lacked a grave here.
this is the restless nausea:
to run around the world as a window,
to shine out of courtesy,
to sharpen the senses, continuously.
what is this poem about?
is it about piety,
is it about shadows,
is it about the weight of the mornings?
they brought me from afar
to meet my son,
spilled into my womb,
ser-rio, river-being,
written slowly between continents,
alive and breathless and primitive,
colorless just like love.
they brought me from afar
to land on a few words –
“Ice”,
“soil”,
“irrigated god”.
body-God that flows
in your flesh, son, which is mine,
hidden in perpetual hands.
what is this life about?
unexpected friends,
men in fragments,
passengers in combat.
you will be the warrior who hesitates,
the truth and the lie,
the enraged memory,
pure disorder,
the fairest window
and the biggest journey.
David Huntington
David Huntington lives in Shanghai and is managing web editor at SpittoonCollective.com. His work is published or forthcoming in the likes of Literary Hub, Alluvium, and Post Road; his screenplay ‘New Violence’ was selected for the 2018 Middlebury Script Lab. The poems below were originally published in Alluvium.
May the Smuggler
One day I simply awoke
within an enemy—
Even to crouch home
would be a crime.
The trees pummeled the air.
The merchants spoke in accusations—
I gave an urchin boy my native coin, he said:
Only the emperor
is permitted cartography.
I said I trespass not by will:
But in the deeper will of sleep, they took me.
Wisemen pray to the syndicate,
he said.
That’s the word these days.
Around this town I wandered a river
saddled by a bridge
of whitish stone and righteous.
The whole day and none crossed, though
arched so pure and paramount.
I feigned interest with a cobbler,
asked: Must not there be some other road?
But his foreign language only rang
like intonations of my name—
Were they on to me?
But of course they were.
The tall grass shown like mackerel.
All the townsfolks’ eyes were hidden from me.
Night had fallen: An unwelcomed traveler
is made into a prowler.
Lapping moonlight from a puddle,
I cursed the will who willed me so
and envied the hearthlit silhouettes.
All men do not wake equal . . .
The bridge was silent
and wholly blue.
I knew not to which land it crossed, only,
that I looked too like a villain here.
And so I tried the crossing.
Swiftly, then slowly—
The old stone slabs were magnificent and true.
It was then the river saw me, a stranger—
its currents coiled
and waters arraigned!
Blindfolded and beaten, took.
I was not righteous; they were not wrong.
As the townsfolk wrote my sentence,
I knew there had never been hope.
We see green only
when the snake wills it.
They say:
Wisemen pray to the syndicate.
Now in my cell that is all I do:
Scratch dates in the clay
and as sleep descends, utter:
May the smuggler steal me home.
I’d left my city open that night
and when I woke I closed it.
I tidied my pages
and crossed the streets.
The beggars took their corners.
My students looked down the long halls.
From my tower
I could hear the summation
and a tin-like hammer near Xujiahui.
I went to the sculpture park and read a book
among the statues I didn’t know what to do.
It took only one rain to shed summer.
The streets became numb and increased their tension.
At the intersections it was always as if
one of those raincoats cupped a pearl.
I walked over my city, over and over it.
Its towers grew taller every day.
Because I wore gloves I dropped my phone
it broke on the glassy street—
the rain drove the heat down into the belly.
Turned around as I stepped off the subway
all my roads slick black and the faces like lamps
beneath their umbrellas—
It seemed the traffic might never move again.
She met me in a small brown bar.
Anthony Tao
Writer, blogger, editor. Coordinator of the 9th and 10th editions of the international China Bookworm Literary Festival, founding editor of Beijing Cream, current Asia managing editor of SupChina, former editor-in-chief of the digital media platform Radii. ALBUM: The Last Tribe on Earth.
Former poetry editor at Spittoon and the Anthill; poetry appears or is forthcoming in The Cortland Review, Prairie Schooner, Borderlands, Asian Cha, Cottonwood, Poetry East West, Naugatuck River Review, and other places, with a poem anthologized in the book While We’re Here.
Just Another Park in Sichuan
Near the 1911 Revolution monument
listening to music, a woman
in a maroon puff jacket
wipes away tears.
I don’t know what the singer,
seated on the open colonnade of middle age,
is singing. I don’t know what notes are rising
like attar off roses
out of the erhu and mandolin.
I don’t know
specifically which heartstrings are being tugged or plucked,
those that make us consider
poets sepulchered in moonlit rivers
or those that make us frown
on a rain shower through sunbeams.
If we emerged from cocoons deaf and blind
with teachings of old masters woven into our skin,
would the light make sense? would the music?
Whether we are being manipulated like puppets
with our hand-stitched smiles and patched-up cheeks
or if this serenade is for us to raise our droopy lids
at a sky streaked with rockets and reflection,
who can say? I only know these dulcet notes
are enough to moisten an old woman’s eyes
and pierce the silk screen over a lost half-century
with arrows no straw boat can catch,
landing with a sniffle and plink
— just the noise one makes
when stripped clean, emptied out,
tied to the diapason of life’s full slate,
guilt and zither, mulberry and shame,
charcoal and snow, tinder and chassis.
You could surmise our singer was singing for the self,
or the moment, or pining upon frost,
her throat arranging the melisma of Gregorian chants
she never knew existed,
or that she debated ancient sages under rustling trees
who fashion themselves born from eggs
and say friendships die, the prana survives,
but I believe
she has her own myths unhitched to past or culture,
she is a mermaid from a turquoise lake
and with each kick surges
until she surfaces,
shedding dead skin, salt, incipits,
leaving the decision of heaven and earth’s benevolence
to dogs. She is not a phoenix
or nude white crane but
an obstreperous goose, risen.
That happens in the next verse. If only
you knew how to listen.