Poem: "事故//INCIDENT"

After Layli Long Soldier

INCIDENT. From incidere. A word

of falling into–to cut, to trespass, to bleed.

In law, attaching to. In body, detaching from.

INCIDENT: the broom-handle jabbing the gut

into shards of glass, lodged where spine meets air.

Winter breath stabbing nostrils, sharp as the t

capping incident: that final huff, the icicle of a joke

snapping. Lips tightening. Tongue clicking teeth.

In place of incident, teachers explain it as:

A blank space where the body was.

The sound of a rib cracking. (See: DANGER.)

The moss growing inside throats. (See: GUILT.)

INCIDENT(S). Plural. Reefs harboring boats 

long-since wrecked, split open. Groaning wood. Wood

filling with water. Dirt. Glass becoming seaglass. No–

they are rifts. Lacerations. Wounds pried wide to hold

everything politicians leave unsaid.

INCIDENT: the soldier who knows blood like his daughter’s

braid, knows fire like his mother’s stove. As the tide 

recedes, he lines the bodies neat, legal margins along the ditches.

RECOGNITION: He lies, believing he doesn’t 

recognize the faces once he wipes the mud from their cheeks.

Note:

The title of this poem, shìgù, means incident in Mandarin. The translation of individual characters are: 事 shì–event. 故 gù–cause. 事故 reversed is 故事, which means story.

Official records note. Fragments. Zhejiang, 1954-1983.

1954.5.3 — Chén Yuánqīng (陈元青)’s timber raft capsized in floodwaters at Shíguǒjiāng. 

1961.6.3 — Fāng Měidì (方美弟) drowned steering grain barge through Qīngwān Rapids. 

1974.8.20 — Unlicensed passenger boat overturned near Baiyán. 4 dead. Captain Wú (吴).  

1975.6.19 — Hu (胡)’s overloaded vessel struck reefs at Táohuā Shallows. Lǐ Xīngnán (李星南)—Yúnhé town’s Hydrology Director—among lost.

1983.3.4 — Wú Sōngchéng (吴松成)’s freighter sank at Tānkēng Reef. 24 aboard. 5 fatalities.  

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