MONDAY ARTPOST 1226-2022

MONDAY
ARTPOST
1226-2022
ISSN1918-6991
MONDAYARTPOST.COM
Columns by Artists and Writers
Bob Black / bq / Cem Turgay /
Fiona Smyth / Gary Michael Dault
/ Holly Lee / Kai Chan / Kamelia
Pezeshki/ Shelley Savor /
Tamara Chatterjee / Wilson Tsang
+ Z FICTION, a selection of 15
photographs (Lee Ka-sing)
MONDAY ARTPOST published on Mondays. Columns by Artists and Writers. All Right Reserved. Published since 2002.
An Ocean and Pounds publication. ISSN 1918-6991. email to: mail@oceanpounds.com

CHEEZ
Fiona Smyth

Caffeine Reveries
Shelley Savor
Winter Treetops

Poem a Week
Gary Michael Dault
I saw Christmas burdening the winter.
there’s was a week or two
of logs in the fireplace
and public joy lifted into the air like sparks
the people wept fir trees
howled ribbons of tape
crunched their Christmas boots
over the hard chest of earth
A Post-Christmas Poem
Christmas is over
I hope it made people happy for a few
minutes
As for me, I dunno, I missed the Infant Jesus
on his straw bed, the soft animals gathered
there
I felt helpless about Ukraine
freezing and dying
I can’t have and don’t want
A Merry Little Christmas
I tried to look about me
I saw an old man
slide a slab of honeycomb
onto his head like a hat
the honey dripping down
like a choir’s song
over his shoulders
his tears falling like wax
coloured lights broke out on houses
vamping along eavestroughs
plastic reindeer are still feeding
on styrofoam snowballs
for me, Christmas sat in the corner of the
room
with the somebody’s trifle
and somebody’s fruitcakes
with mad black crows of glass
and peacocks of wine
peace be ours
cried everywhere loudspeakers
parking for your car
in the depths of your dreams
crumbs for the backyard birds
stuck to my fingertips
instead of dropping
onto the snow

From the Notebooks
(2010-2022)
Gary Michael Dault
From the Notebooks, 2010-2022
Number 159: To Malgorzata: Upper Meadowlands (March 13, 2021). For your mother’s sunny day, sitting
above the house at Czarnow, Poland

Greenwood
Kai Chan
Study
paper, wire

Sketch
Holly Lee
The Key
There are three fridge magnets attached to the door of her bathroom storage cabinet. It was K who
put them there. The items are: a clock tower, a red smiling mouth with sparkling white teeth, and
an Ultraman. Was it a random act, when K put them there? She wonders. For these three simple
objects always present, when she walks into the toilet, there’s the mirror on the left, and, the cabinet
on the right. They speak to her not in words, but conjuring up a pathway, a passage into the time
past. A set of strings. These trivial souvenirs, these small-time items.
She recalls a poem by the late Tang poet Li Shangyin (813–858) “A Fine Zither 錦 瑟 ”, and its
fifty strings. If each string, each strain evokes some vanished memories or things, then here, on
the cabinet door, down her memory lane, one string is the Kowloon–Canton Railway; the second
the Kowloon Walled City; and the third string, a superhero, a Japanese pop icon from the 60s
equivalent to America’s Superman.
The Clock Tower was once part of the Kowloon-Canton Railway Terminus in Tsim Sha Tsui–
overlooking Hong Kong Island, the Central District and Wan Chai. The Terminus was demolished

in the late 70s and only the Clock Tower remains on the spot, serving as a landmark and was
later declared a monument in Hong Kong. She had ridden trains in the old Kowloon Terminus
numerous times, but did not remember the station particularly well, except for the Clock Tower.
When she looked for a few souvenirs before migrating to Canada, this clock tower magnet was one
of them.
The last decade of the twentieth century might be the most exciting time of her life. This day, when
she looks into the mirror, how she wishes to have perfect teeth! Not dreaming of the pearly-white,
but the wholesome number of 32. Due to negligence, she has lost close to half of her teeth, and the
remainders are an odd lot. Where has the perfect smile gone? A long time ago, she & K roamed
around the peripherals of the Kowloon Walled City, and were struck with awe to see hundreds of
dental offices residing in its massive building blocks. Almost all between 10 and 14 stories high,
the tower blocks were packed tight against each other, forming an organic fortress, encompassing
ten thousand households, and more than 30,000 residents. The Walled City was demolished in
1993, but not images of the mouths and the teeth, and the delightful smile she thought she once
possessed.
She is not a fan of Superman; she prefers Doctor Who, especially played by David Tennant and
Matt Smith. In fact, she is not a fan of science fiction in particular. But this Ultraman character
was huge from the 60s to the 80s. Every Asian kid seemed to be affected one way or the other. She
remembers her daughter calling it “salt egg superman”, for Ultraman’s eyes protrude like two salt
egg yolks, ridiculously out of its metallic face. They almost dumped this magnet, for it’s no longer in
vogue. She has no idea why it is still there, and picked up to be one of the few magnets on this spare
canvas. Then she notices another object, which is the key. A pair of them held together by a ring;
one fit in the lock, the other dangling in the air. It has a reason to be there, only that she could not
find the brand name, and so it remains, to be a key.

The Photograph
coordinated by
Kamelia Pezeshki
At 34 by Diana Bloomfield
Chlorophyll print made on a hosta leaf, 2021

Leaving Taichung
Station
Bob Black
Returning After, a French Meal
The sky seams an exact fit to the alphabet of the steps
a solitary figure giraffes toward a distempered porch,
his posture a softened exclamation point,
his walk and recitation relearned in an up-tempo skip
when in the light cloven figures seemingly burst, suddenly
dark drapes scribble off black notes casually on the sky,
a musical score upon a downed dead wire
alone a single bat recumbent along the line of abracadabra,
a wayward letter dropped from the length of a word,
a dogeared page from the scattering sky
the physics of light meant to form and deform the creature V
shorn from its preceding vowel and sibling brush stroke:
neither mammal nor structured thought nor abacus of sound—
the flapping upward recalls his walk homeward the lambent night.
a day ago and the word it conveys to him now—
soundless as beast zips its way toward some long lone dropping,
as she was dropped into the grave and lacquer coffin.
The evening later off-slipping, the wings’ grammar adrift,
the evidentiary thought or a kite upending,
his solitary glide, the space left opened, and whatever recipe one invents:
the lungs of the land left standing skeletal
the sound of things falling--
the plane’s rev’d up backwarding, the glass sprinkling in its drop scattering toward-the-concrete
misstep,
the malaprop drips like a spool,

memories gone misremembered, the katabasis of the awkward turn,
the plummeting toward the dandelion, the re-arrange’d bee swatted,
the puzzled shell shucked,
you that slipped away, a kaleidoscope braid:
don’t throw your hands up, constellation over consternation, just yet,
the small blip in the radar and the blue swirl above the hood
the you inside the me left behind,
the invincible summer seeded in the thorny stems found on the side walk of February, aflex
as she was dropped into the grave and lacquer coffin
With love comes strange currencies,
though he comes toward another hard-hurt, he thinks
the scattering dust mites raftering a bridge with the twilight, ajoist’d.
and he watches the bat go swinking away from the rest of the cloaked colony
and his heart recognizes that decisive turn, away
as she was dropped into the grave and lacquer coffin.
Remember that pivot, she once wrote,
the hinge more than the syllables you were fed or the stories long and lean you once kept.

TANGENTS
Wilson Tsang
Scarecrow

Open/Endedness
bq 不 清
彗 星 C/2022 E3 (ZTF)
COMET C/2022 E3 (ZTF)
曾 經 有 一 些 想 法 被 遺 忘 於 你 的 指 尖
曾 經 有 一 些 想 法 被 稀 釋 成 一 些 像
蒸 餾 水 的 東 西 , 使 熨 斗 的 壽 命
延 長 ; 曾 經 有 一 些 想 法 被 鎖 在 保 險 箱 裡
There were ideas forgotten at your fingertips.
There were ideas watered down to something
Like distilled water that made an iron lasted
Longer. There were ideas locked up in a safe.
對 於 多 年 生 植 物 , 冬 天 的 生 活 更 為 簡 單
它 們 熟 睡 著 , 夢 見 冰 淇 淋 和 小 矮 人
沒 什 麼 困 擾 它 們 , 也 沒 有 思 緒 被
沖 走 。 一 切 都 好 酷 , 正 如 不 久 之 前
For perennials, life is easier in winter; they
Are asleep, dreaming ice creams and gnomes.
Nothing bugs them and no thoughts get
Flushed away. It’s all cool as they told me
他 們 告 訴 我 。 然 後 一 顆 彗 星 走 近
帶 回 來 五 萬 年 前 未 被 實 現 的
願 望 。 尼 安 德 特 人
和 猛 獁 象 現 在 到 哪 裡 了 ?
Not long ago. Then a comet approaches,
Bringing back unfulfilled wishes from
Fifty thousand years ago. Where are
The neanderthals and mammoths now?
物 件 是 如 此 的 單 純
一 枝 鉛 筆 和 一 張 白 紙
真 摯 如 平 分 一 個 偶 數 但 又 不 用
用 過 時 的 計 算 機
Objects are simple.
A pencil and a piece of paper:
Fair like dividing an even number without using
An expired calculator.

Travelling Palm
Snapshots
Tamara Chatterjee
USA (November, 2000) – While the previous
trips were fantastic, the journey around the
Grand Canyon was majestic. We arrived
in Canyon De Chelly to mild weather and
blooming fruit trees, under a dusting of
snow. There was an atmospheric change as
we navigated our way into the canyon. From
the canyon’s inner sanctum surrounded
by petroglyphs and pictographs; the white
house ruins and sandstone cliffs, a brilliant
sight came into view, we watched a bird of
prey superimpose its shadows on the desert
varnished surface.

ProTesT
Cem Turgay

ART LOGBOOK
Holly Lee
Shinro Ohtake is one of the most important creative forces in contemporary Japanese art.
Ohtake’s oeuvre includes drawing, pasted works, painting, sculpture and photography, as well
as experimental music and videos.
Shinro Ohtake
https://www.takeninagawa.com/en/artists/7791/
(See also DOUBLE DOUBLE September edition 2022: Reality. Irreality. Augmented Reality)

Lee Ka-sing
Z FICTION series
a selection of
15 photographs
An excerpt from
DOUBLE DOUBLE
October issue 2022

(2010)

(2011)

(2010)

(2010)

(2010)

(2010)

(2010)

(2010)

(2010)

(2010)

(2013)

(2013)

(2013)

(2009)

(2010)

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