Poetry

"I arrived at the poetry section, its specters floating over rain-battered anthologies, reciting Li Bai in an accent I've never heard. They faded into the sea-washed outline of a bearded poet, who was either a future self, or a student from Hanoi. The poet looked to me, pale, close to death, and begged, 'I have been silent for six years. Is it time?'"

- draft, "The Library of Cabramatta" (2000)