Artwork by Henri Souffay. Courtesy: ArtChowk Gallery.
The Missing Slate’s Poetry World Cup finished earlier this month, with more than 6000 reader votes cast to whittle the 32 poems down to just one winner. We’re ending the month with a selection of new poems from the Poetry World Cup champion, Singapore’s Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé.
d2Â is for determinacy
insomuch that frege instructed kangarewe
to cut up the pine planks in perfect shapes
angular but with sharp and distinct boundaries
like how we define the world we live in
and chart its topography the way we hike
through shenandoah national park then
drive back taking the blue ridge parkway
where a cherokee miner invites us over
to old tanasi where there is nothing at all
but memory making its trail to chota
where a cyclist points in the direction of
old copper road and says follow the fennec fox
before the first mile and you’ll be able to
determine for yourself the truth of things
and what simple elements need to be added
into the big mix to muster completeness
a definition neither inexact nor vague
e is for electric eel
inasmuch as its nest is no more than
its own saliva as if a dribble of thought
was expected of it like kangarewe’s drivel
about barthes’ exegesis of brecht
his epic theatre snaking through berlin
like the eel and its four hundred volts
like a cry of indignation from its abdomen
just as brecht wrote der jasager first as if
to say he said yes made him a logothete
but there was der neinsager where no
means no as if hating the ache of
affirmation when the dingo howls at
the moon the way the grey wolf does
and says we’re not all wild dogs
and we’re angry at the label and culling
and the tragedy lies in all misnomers
e2Â is for ethics
insomuch that the emperor penguin
defined the eel as a snake but no one cared
between the sandbank and whitewater
as we swirled our feet in the pond then dug
our heels into the mud saying it’s okay
to spend two summers talking like this
between makeshift tents and baked beans
until the quail returned to an empty nest
frantically looked around the brush
then settled into the dust and closed its eyes
to die we say to die without having to feel
regret and sorrow and anger and grief
every deteminate emotion rising and waning
like the shade from midday to evening
when the moorhen tells the magpie and mayfly
they’re lucky to be dull and colorless
the macaw already dry and tied to the fence
its feathers placed between nine sheets of
vellum paper showing the layers underneath
q is for quetzal
inasmuch as kangarewe wakes to a sullen
face of deleuze looking askance as if avoiding
the notation and annotation as if all
the bass clefs needed unlocking as provision
craig armstrong’s morning breaks a lull
to these years as the crested quetzal
makes its pilgrimage from panama
into interstate 95 where the metal
reflects its plumage and the icy green
looks down at the frozen ground as if
buried underneath history and all our
narratives were an indelible clearness
and obscurity and supreme effort of things
being hurled or dragged or wrenched
like a mountain of nests mounted on
the world tree its branches heaving
then lowering themselves to the ground
unable to fly or ask why this why now
~ Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé
Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé is an interdisciplinary artist, also working in clay. Trained in publishing at Stanford, with a theology master’s (world religions) from Harvard and fine arts master’s (creative writing) from Notre Dame, he is the recipient of the PEN American Center Shorts Prize, among many other awards. His poem ‘gÇŽn qÃng yòng shì :: impulsive and impetuous’ won The Missing Slate’s 2014 Poetry World Cup.
