Cha: An Asian Literary Journal

by Jonathan Chan the skin of my hands has begun to tighten. it will not slip off, as if a pair of gloves. in Hiroshima, the rubble has been preserved. a shadow remains on a carved concrete step. the rubble remains in ways that flesh will not. paper cranes surround a statue of a girl. how the children have remembered the children. spirits cry out for water. we remain at the edge of snow. the skies once ignited in fire and fell in sticky, black rain.

by Daryl Lim Wei Jie Bougainvillea blooming so thick and resplendent they consume the bridge they adorn a bright pink float promising deliverance from this weary rational realm The dragons perched on the Chinese temple offer transport to the heavens on their backs which glisten like that twink’s last night Guanyin our mother & father gazes with a benevolence so searing I tear & say thank you thank you for just listening Second-hand bookstores where aging books passed through many eyes and...

by Oindri Sengupta Through the Clouds Very often I hear a river flowing inside me. Its water cut into pieces like stones quarried Before they are made into bridges. It sleeps between the roads That have drifted away Keeping neither memory nor memorylessness. And after crossing thousand galaxies and one star It slipped and rose and slipped again. I kept rolling with it as a moon would, Before it sucks up all its light.

by Ash Dean I observe through glass that also doubles me a glare that gleams a halo through the window’s steam. It used to mean something: A hanging lantern, like a bell tolling in the night. A single bulb that wavers. In the distance more blips plot the constellations of civilization. A strobe floods a frosty field.

by M.J. Cagumbay Tumamac, translated from the Kinaray-a language into English by Eric Gerard H. Nebran The tongue is antediluvian, before the flood, in the grouping of the dead by C.Q.: was alive and spoken but now forgotten in the present and there is no proof of its name or the owners; no one knows the ways of its existence. It’s visible * in the city what was abandoned by the war, says M.D.—e.g., Mostar, where you can see the windows remain open.

by Sekhar Banerjee Throughout the summer break, we watched Mr. Bean but could not laugh out loud— there was a tax beyond 60 decibels. My elder brother planted a horse-chestnut tree and named it My Experiment with Untruth. It caught fire and withered without ash; the agencies raided our house and confiscated his pen drive with Love and Other Drugs. For three consecutive days that summer, we received blank newspapers. There was even a power cut when the trees were blooming.

by Karen Ma Lijia Zhang, a Chinese rocket-factory worker turned journalist, burst onto the English-language book scene with her 2008 memoir, Socialism is Great: A Worker's Memoir of the New China. This coming-of-agebook describes what it was like growing up in a blue-collar family during 1980s China, and what ultimately inspired the author to learn English and become a writer. In January 2017, Zhang published her second book in English, this time a fictional work titled Lotus: A Novel.

by Yan Li, translated from the Chinese by Anna Yin Falling That’s right, the rain has stopped, but you can’t be sure which weapon an endless war will rest upon. It’s like how people of different ages carry different lifespans, yet an accident, with just a raised hand, can unravel the order you once believed in. Though you may firmly recall the anniversaries of events, you cannot define what kind of vision shapes an effective future.

by Prince Marlo Delicano Montadas Paksiw and Recollections Behind the quadrilateral double-pane windows, peeks an old dear, her shriveled elbow resting on her right leg, propped on the old, ragged terracotta sofa, struggling to remember the name of the specific way the boy eats his food by hand, as rice forms in his hands as though they were yema balls.

by Kammy Lee Fig. 1. Xi Xi, Cover of Hua / Huaben, 1995 – from Xi Xi, Carnival of Animals, CUHK Press, 2022. In Ann Hui’s recent documentary Elegies (2023), Xi Xi makes an appearance as one of Hui’s most loved contemporary Hong Kong poets. Wearing a bright red hat that exudes a Paddingtonian charm, Xi Xi talks about her creative inspirations, fondly holding a teddy bear she handcrafted.