Circle

Chinese Speech Contest

32 Chinese Speech Contest Shi or “is,” mystic and micro, but matters, and I am a fool for getting it wrong on my tongue each time, shi should be easy, the beginning of shit, like cowshit, an easy whip of the lips. But we’re all stiff mutes, trembling tongues, waiting for cowbells for time’s up. Forgetting memorized lines led to a resewn face. And we all knew there only could be one real winner, the way we knew batteries could not be recycled. It’s ingrained, engraved, no such thing as a win-win. Immigrants in their evening gowns, not quite scholars, barely-there business people, nearly-made somethings. On that stage, inflections mattered, amputations of sentences would get you a red ear. I would return to that stage again and again if I could sow those words onto a land I recognized. Let others straighten their backs to crag, burning with winning blood. Let others who want and want weed those words from some other land. ...