POEM OF THE MONTH
July
Summer
Lychee by Derek Mueller
Night Market
Dreams can be bought cheaply. I
would sell mine for a cloth dipped
in ice water, sugared haw fruit,
a thimbleful of vengeance. Anything
can be fried and skewered on a stick:
Scorpions. Uncurling octopus tentacles.
Lamb. Lights blink from this stall
then that: shadows do not lie down—
they breed and sneak off. Our
stomachs are mewling. Steam
from a flash-boiling tripe vat
plumps salt in licks down
your spine. The border between
yesterday and tomorrow, being friends
or something more: rice paper
melting in our mouths. Peaches
sweat through their monkey fur.
A hawker mistakes me for a tour
guide. I place dragon eyes between
your teeth. You slice them down
to their lacquered pits.
Jia-Rui Cook is a writer, editor, and producer in Los Angeles. Her poetry has recently appeared in Air/Light, Alta Journal, and Hunger Mountain Review. She was a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times for seven years before joining the digital news and media office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Night markets are the best in summer — when hot, sweaty days give way to slightly less hot, sweaty nights. What I love about night markets is that they feel full of possibility. Practically anything can be eaten, bought, or sold there. Who wouldn't want to linger in such a dreamlike space, where you can be whatever you want to be before you have to face the next day?
I love “Night Market” by Jia-Rui Cook for transporting me to a place pulsating with life, a place where dreams are tangible and everything—from exotic foods to fleeting emotions—is for sale. The poem is a treat to the senses. Cook captures the essence of summer night markets, bustling with life and endless possibilities. We move through sugared haw fruit and skewered scorpions, shadows and steam, and under this wandering I sense an unsullied desire for pleasure. Also, “Peaches sweat through their monkey fur” — what the fuck kind of imagination is that! I love this way of looking at the world, where everything becomes new. Cook’s poem invites us to explore a world where the mundane meets the magical, the border between past and future dissolves, reminding us of the thin, almost imperceptible line that separates the real from the surreal.
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