PAN-FRIED FISH {forthcoming in MMM Vol. X.}
Scrumptious mahjongclacks its ivory teeth
the sound a Sunday imperative
in Hong Kong. Decisive
as the pile driver
in the huge hole on the corner.
Pan-fried fish is never arbitrary, either,
pungent as sex and that ocean
we swam in my bed for five days.
No need to jog for exercise that week.
Though we did pause enmeshed
like the rogue orchid
colonizing the crack on my
concrete roof, sweating nectar.
Kathryn (Kate) Rogers has twice been short-listed for the Winston Collins Best Canadian Poem Prize by Descant Magazine (Toronto) in February 2009 and January 2008. Her poetry, essays and reviews have been published in anthologies and literary magazines in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Canada and the UK including the Asia Literary Review, Dimsum, Pressed, The New Quarterly, Contemporary Verse II, Canadian Woman Studies, The Mad Woman in the Academy, Blood and Aphorisms and Orbis International.
Kate is co-editor of the international women’s poetry anthology Not A Muse (Haven Books, Hong Kong, March 2009); her poetry collection, “Painting the Borrowed House”, debuted at the Man Hong Kong Literary Festival in March 2008. It is available on Amazon.com and from Proverse, Hong Kong.
Originally from Toronto, Kate has been teaching writing, literature and English for Academic and Professional Purposes for colleges and universities in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan for the past ten years. A bi-lingual Chinese and English collection of her essays about conservation, bird watching and culture in Taiwan, The Swallows’ Return, was published in June 2006.
Kate teaches in the Division of Language Studies at the Community College of City University in Hong Kong.