Samizdat in Blood

I hope you will tell people in the future about this suffering. lin zhao, imprisoned poet, who—legend has it— pricked her wrists with bamboo and wrote in blood

I

That summer, the revolution was a litany. We chanted because we believed our god could hear us, he whose bootsteps stamped our mud with his red imprimatur,

his seed—blossoming before our eyes, fruits and flowers and the fragrance of a new tomorrow. We had eaten bitterness, but now we feasted on joy, drank hope.

Who knew sound was like water, that it would spill out of auditoriums whose walls could not contain human nature. One ocean wave breaks, but bundle them . . .

The auditorium. After we—we because psychological torture is a group effort— affixed a wood plate to his spine, our words bruised him to the nail bed of his toes.

Thousand-year gold but no thousand-year-old noble!Extermination of mosquitoes, weeds, and landlords!

We breathed spittle and brandished our fingers like spears. The physical pain came later in the dusty courtyard, newly paved,

the deep purple pulsing vein of his forehead a target for rocks. Perhaps death happened then. Perhaps later,

near the river, when we kicked his leg, the good one unbent from years in the fields of his father and his father’s father.

The land graciously received him, walked him into water, which turned to shit. Clean it, the six or so dozen of us commanded. Eat it.

Ii

Soap does more than clean. Bamboo can record history, and by sheer will

a human being can refute it,

even her own. In case this was not clear, let me write it

in blood with the red star of my heart

my life

in case this

was not clear

go ahead read it the stain of suffering

one stroke at a time