Don’t betray me,
his brow suggests
behind a covering.
I offer him a beer
as reconciliation,
which he refuses
in the presence of
cops. It’s not illegal
to drink publicly here,
I should mention.
I have sketched out
a park bench where
I envision us spacing
out, chugging beers
beside the soccer pitch,
trading daily nonsense
safe from the sirens.
Every line break
keeps threatening
towards articulation
when I want to write
effusively, leave room
for silliness, room
for nursery rhymes.
Where else can he
turn to? To us?
Sam Cheuk is a Hong Kong-born Canadian poet and author of Love Figures (Insomniac Press, 2011), Deus et Machina (Baseline Press, 2017), and the upcoming collection Postscripts from a City Burning (Palimpsest Press, 2021) on the 2019 protests in Hong Kong and their aftermath. He holds an MFA in creative writing from New York University and a BA in English literature from the University of Toronto. He is currently working on the second half of the diptych, tentatively titled Marginalia, that examines the function, execution, and generative potential behind censorship. #香港人加油 #StandWithHongKong