Kim Gek Lin Short, China Cowboy [sample excerpts] by Tarpaulin Sky Press

Advance Praise for China Cowboy

—Rauan Klassnik

“Moving between the explicit descriptions of the Marquis de Sade and the implicit ironies of Nabokov, these pieces are excruciatingly compelling, so infernal as they are related in languages variously pornographic and desperately, radically tender. Short’s brilliant tragicomedy can be read as a metaphor for China’s dynamic with American culture or the story of any determined enterprising youth whose eager “bloody head” under a bumbling tyrant’s “boot is bent.” A bold, imaginative, timely work from a courageous and complex thinker..

—Heidi Lynn Staples

China Cowboy is more hydra than hybrid, a slim monster sprouting new directions for form, narrative, culture, and identity. Meanwhile, everything it bites comes to vicious, gorgeous life.

—Christian TeBordo

La La is a myth-making myth. What we learn from her is that we all are. Born in Hong Kong to a family of thieves, she survives by giving herself fully to her religion— Americana. Her saints: Loretta Lynn and Clint Eastwood. Even after being kidnapped and brutally tortured by one of her family’s victims—ironically a farmer from Missouri named Ren—she asks herself, “what would Patsy Cline do?” The answer: “she’d belt every song in that / scratchy face.” Composed primarily of prose blocks that miraculously retain the surprise of linebreaks, this fragmented narrative chronicles their dreams, delusions, and horrific physical lives. La La and Ren are as searing as any characters I’ve encountered—Henry and Mr. Bones, Lolita and Humbert Humbert, Hannibal Lecter and Buffalo Bill, etc.—and we share with them the reality that something must be imagined in order to keep going. Mired in what he is doing to La La, even Ren can comfort himself: “I grasp myself with my arms and say it is / almost too much to contain, this happiness.” La La can only respond by yelling “into her microphone: ‘Shut up, Lao Ren! I caint hear / myself sing!’”

—Chris Tonelli

Heated & heartbreaking, China Cowboy charms like wedding cans, flesh-filled, on tarmac. This car (perhaps an old, long Cadillac with longhorns glaring & charred) contains a man, Ren: a “family man” or “something commensurate.” La-La: our heroine. & the driver, guiding us expertly over the bluegrass, bodies & Time Warps of Hell, child abuse, power & Country Music is Kim Gek Lin Short.

First Edition, June 2012 ISBN-13: 9780982541685 Printed and bound in the USA Library of Congress Control Number: 2012932266 Cover design: Andrew Shuta Interior design: Christian Peet and Kim Gek Lin Short Tarpaulin Sky Press P.O. Box 189 Grafton, Vermont 05146 www.tarpaulinsky.com For more information on Tarpaulin Sky Press perfect-bound and hand-bound editions, as well as information regarding distribution, personal orders, and catalogue requests, please visit our website at www.tarpaulinsky.com. Reproduction of selections from this book, for non-commercial personal or educational purposes, is permitted and encouraged, provided the Author and Publisher are acknowledged in the reproduction. Reproduction for sale, rent, or other use involving financial transaction is prohibited except by permission of the Author and Publisher.

China Cowboy ÂŠ 2012 Kim Gek Lin Short

FOR THE MOTHER

Contents The La Las / 1

Cowgirls Don’t Have Flat Faces / 5 The Devil’s Handprint / 6 Life’s Cheap / 7 Voice Exercises / 8 Bargain / 9 Stigmata / 10 Mollusks / 11 Hide-Out / 12 Devils / 13 Hell / 14

Fist City, Hong Kong 1997 Fist City / 17 Patsy Clone / 18 Cow Loon, 1989 / 19 Suitcase / 20 American Ball / 21 Sugarcube / 22 Shangri-la / 23 Home / 24 Run / 25 Cyan / 26 Butcher Holler / 27 Sex and Run / 28 Knots / 29 Nebulizer / 30 My Country Superstar Humility / 31 The Live Album / 32

Hell, Hong Kong 1989

La La Land, Hong Kong 1989

Bound For Glory 1997/1989 Bound for Glory / 55 Reminisce / 56 Heidi / 57 The Violet Hour / 58 Three / 60 The Taedium Vitae / 61 Yu Noh Hoo / 62 Cowboys Against Child Abuse (CACA) / 64 It Was Sad When That Great Ship Went Down / 67 Relationship Sabotaging / 70 Rinse / 72 This Bean is Your Bean / 73 X! X! X! / 75 Bean Laws / 77 Fear of Abandonment / 79 Bye-Bye Bill / 81

Repulse Bay / 35 The House That Ren Built / 36 American Cereal / 37 Huigui Zuguo / 38 Supplies / 39 Known Circumstances / 40 Yellow Notice / 41 Earspoon / 42 Yellow / 44 Vacuum / 45 Clint / 46 Row / 47 The Men / 48 Feiji Piao / 50 Rest / 51

Installations 2001 i. The Plan / 85 ii. La Laâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Guthriecrucian Songbook: A Bildungsroman / 99

Cowgirls Don’t Have Flat Faces

China Cowboy / 5

La La always wanted to be a cowgirl. As far back as she could remember there was that suitcase of records Baba brought home from work. Work was supposed to be driving typhoon-stranded tourists from airport to hotel. Work was really taking the tourists to an alley stabbing them stealing their stuff. La La’s job was to listen to the radio all day music music during typhoon season for the Royal Observatory to interrupt transit suspended. When they did she woke up Baba he left for work. La La liked to listen to music music all day she played her records. Loretta Lynn Patsy Cline Emmylou Harris beautiful cowgirls. La La never asked for anything but one day she asked for a guitar. Her mother was hanging laundry out the kitchen window. Her mother blared cowgirls don’t have flat faces gave her daughter a clothespin. La La put it on her nose. Wore it to school. Wore it to bed. Did not take it off even dyeing her hair.

The Devilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Handprint

China Cowboy / 6

The mother knew the child was bad from the start she came feet first too early while the woman was at work. There was a pop. Slid on the kitchen floor the grease her water a white dark man appeared maybe a cowboy tucked her apron up. Took the two feet presenting and pulled so hard left his handprint on the baby girlâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s right leg, impression of fist closed round her fatty calf-part. When she is older the daughter asks where the bruise on her leg comes from. it looks like claws the mother broadcasts The Devil. Next day gives her daughter cowboy boots tube socks.

Life’s Cheap

China Cowboy / 7

As a means of conversation the mother did not see herself in the child. Except maybe the chin at first something cosmetic the drool. As she grew she did see once several sparks of fire shoot from La La’s black eyes. Something complicated. Something of a whole life in those eyes. She caught the child squinting at her through the crib bars and her hair began to fall out. Thin into an X that appeared in her lap for a second then disappeared. When she tried to stop the hair falling with her hands there were Xs in her palms. Secondfast panic to stop the hair falling out rest of her life without hair. She saw that hair grow on her daughter’s head almost overnight. Mossy black vulnerable. She saw Xs in that hair cussed LIFE IS CHEAP but did not have anything nothing to curse.

Voice Exercises

China Cowboy / 8

Uncle Daddy sees her mother on Tuesdays during the typhoon off-season. There is a room nine-by-twelve joined by a doorway to another room nine-by-six. They go into the room that is nine-bysix it has a sink in it. When Uncle Daddy leaves he steadies a red money envelope on a corner of the sink. Her mother repeatedly the rest of Tuesday and some of Wednesday cleans the sink. It is a ritual. She carefully cuts a circle of carpet from the rug and wets it soaps it scrubs it. Wets it, scrubs again. She does this until the circle of carpet curdles into yolky crumbles in the sink and then she eats the soapy lumps. If there are too many lumps she makes La La eat some too. La La always thinks of Uncle Daddy when she is at a sink washing up gargling swallowing. The only way she can stand it is she convinces herself those soapy fibers sticking in her throat will make her a better singer. She tells herself voice exercises every Tuesday during the typhoon off-season.

Bargain

China Cowboy / 9

Ren makes a bargain. He swears to the devil he wants La La he will do anything. Hell is red carpeted stairs lined with plastic runners smell of wicked shit sound of vrep vrep vrep Ren isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t wearing socks. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a different earth in here. He puts his ear against a suspended speaker it spits THERE IS A WAY LOOK DOWN. He looks down he is standing on mirrors. He is naked his gash is bald. A world only in his wildest. Until now. He goes all the way inside.

Stigmata

China Cowboy / 10

No one sees the little girl with black cowboy boots get off the ferry walking funny. She says her boots are hot. If you look down on the sidewalk you see bubbled balls of melted boot, molten leather slobber, but no one in Kowloon looks there. No one sees the man behind her a cowboy an American tall thin wiping his face with a blue bandana. Even though his wounds are healed he wipes. No one sees how the bandana turns red even though his wounds are healed, it is miraculous, but no one sees it.

Mollusks

China Cowboy / 11

Ren is a family man when he takes La La he wants to be her father or something commensurate. La La sees something in Ren’s pants she thinks of mollusks. The suitcase is empty but La La wears all her clothes anyway like Heidi. Her dolls have more clothes than La La but La La still has enough to be Heidi. La La wants to impress Ren with all of her clothes on she can’t do even one cartwheel. She falls onto the mattress. She sees something in Ren’s pants. She thinks of mollusks.

Hide-Out

China Cowboy / 12

The afternoon La La does not come home from school her mother goes into La La’s stash and eats all of her American cereal. She eats the loops. She eats the flakes. She tears into perfect strips the boxes when she’s done. What time is it, she asks the strips of cardboard. Time I holed up, they answer in La La’s voice. Show me, the mother says. The strips of cardboard ignite inching a hole into La La’s mattress. She stares into the hole. Inside is La La heat-dipped dripping. She can’t look, she says, but looks. There is a man she has seen him before he is fire flinching popping. When her husband gets back gone drunk he leans-shut the door behind him. With his body slides to the floor. Keeps sliding underground just as the singed head of his wife emerges from the box of Fruit Loops.

Devils

China Cowboy / 13

Ren does not know why the little girl wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be sweet to him not even once but he lives hopefully what else can he do. The little girl does not know why the white devil wants to hump so much she believes Americans masturbate too. The white devil does not understand why La La always wears her right cowboy boot even to bed. He asks her one day. She says she has her reasons. Then she thinks to herself looking at his gray chest hairs bony pelvis he must be really really bygone. La La sleeps hard so when she is sleeping he takes off her boot tube sock and with a flame in his finger inspects the handprint wrapped around her lower leg. Calculates she must be about twelve years old.

Hell

China Cowboy / 14

The little girl goes limping down the back road not alone. A truck pulls in front of her it emits punch-bright. The little girl gets in the truck her boots start melting. Hell is a hot place, the radio hisses, get off your feet. She puts them on the dashboard the soles go liquid. She tilts a broken bottle to catch the bootjuice it slips sledding down the dash clump-heavy. The little girl thirsty cuts her lip on the broken bottle. The juice gets boiling. She seeps scorching. Her boots clot-thick crackling her loudest song left.

Fist City

China Cowboy / 17

Y’all, where I come from there are no maps to it, and what y’all don’t know I trick it up. I had experience before I even met Ren, and some of it weren’t girls. I used to practice on the stairs at school I’d ascend on my arms my uniform over my face my hair like when I’m singing. I can fly like they do in chop-chop movies. I am unusually beautiful, I mouth at least 10 times a day, but only in Chinese. I can lasso a noodle. I can bawl in cowboy. I can be blonde or black. Y’all, I would’ve been out of your league at 12. I’m only tattlin’ now, cause I would’ve been 20 today.

Patsy Clone

China Cowboy / 18

When I get to America I will have my own room children in America have their own rooms. It will have a lock on the door like when I’m famous and have curled hair. When I get to America I can be anything I can be Patsy Cline I have her wrists. See how I hold my microphone? It is just like the picture. When I get to America pale skin shape of perfume bottle fuzz underpanted pink dots my nipples. When I get to America cowgirl ears pierced sterling silver headphones loud so I don’t listen. Hear that name they read off my tag? I don’t answer to it anymore, when I get to America.

Bound for Glory

Yes, ready to ramble now, she says. Yes, I say. Then, Waste me, Lao Ren. She says it again: Waste me. We wrastle. She slew jerks me.

China Cowboy / 55

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m bound for glory. An easy traveler. I groan back she grinds a carve into which I glide. La La moans faster little feller and I know we are for each other, one and all, because I can hardly wriggle free this time. Our skin is one. It is a loop of La and La. The juices verse.

The mother pictures

the stories seeping

the highrise La La Is Missing Stories stream in

about the mother

The stories go PICTURE THIS

â&#x20AC;&#x153;There stayed for the last time

a cowgirl

music in a music box looping

She made time

She stayed

in Sham Shui Po

Last seen she was singing

she was screaming

She wore the sun

in a highrise Last seen

like jewelry She never

pretended to get married She wore the sun and tried to grow staying awake

in that stupid space last seen

by no one

Still starring

last scenes

anymore

P I C T U R E T H I S:â&#x20AC;?

________

Plate X LAST Plan c. 1989 365 x 12 days (8760 x 288 hours) HKT Soyabean Gallery Permanent Collection

China Cowboy / 87

in the daylight in stories

just as many

fast down

When Bill was someone else

someone smaller

he done some things

didn’t

Such as:

stifle

all your shit

with a tight-fitting lid

he answered between his legs

he said Tight as ripe

pushing nothing into the world except

another pair of pants

in the sagging pocket

over

to a punch-bright

grass

and ran over

before you check-out make sure you

in your opinion is this lid tight-fitting?

to himself

low

he wished

He took

pickup truck

parked on

as much as possible

i n g i t o u t.

________

Plate X Bill’s Plan c. 1969 14 ½ x 20 days (348 x 480 hours) HKT Soyabean Gallery Permanent Collection

China Cowboy / 88

from

with keys the keys dead gunn

son

someone’s

Bill knows

a place

put to be

where

could do

get killed

all they wanted a child could The child thought

she would

get out

it would do

either

way

She thought

he thinks

he’ll win

but I

a l w a y s w i n.

________

Plate X Bill’s La La’s Plan c. 1989 13 ½ x 22 days (324 x 528 hours) HKT Hong Kong Human Interest Monitor (HKHIM) Evidence Collection

China Cowboy / 89

have thought of it

the little singer

A Kansas City Leanin’ March 1990, Age 13

Now get my boots and my old songs and an advance allowance I’ll get the pills, the killing meals, rid my belly’s contrivance, Rid my belly’s contrivance. To leave this man, the rotten hand, who asks another lady To help for him, retrieve the thin’, to make his gal more purdy, Make his gal more purdy. But this gal, she has a plan, she’ll outdo his dealin, She’ll go out and gad about and fix herself a stealin, Fix herself a steal. If she has one then she has two, Kansas City leanings To get her there, she’ll dye her hair, and use up all his earnings. Use his hard got earns. Why should I care, when he’s my man, he has another lady? He don’t know, but off I’ll blow, to Kansas City, baby, Kansas City, babe.

China Cowboy / 105

It was late last night when all alone, my belly started rumblin, He’s the only help for me, but my man he left me grumblin, My man he left me grumblin.

About the Songstress

China Cowboy / 113

Blonde, bad, just under 5’3 in cowboy boots, Chinese folk-singing sensation, La La, is best known for her karaoke headliner as “Patsy Clone” at the Kansas City nightclub, China Cowboy. Upcoming shows include Sha Tin Bar in Hong Kong, The Saloon in San Francisco, and the annual Guthrie-themed Hootenanny sponsored by the Bay Area organization Cowboys Against Child Abuse (CACA). She lives in Hong Kong with her adoptive father, William O’Rennessey, also known as Ren (pronounced run), an American soybean farmer and artist.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Andrew Shuta for being visual. Gratitude to my family and their lore I love. To Jim and Brontë who live with me, and to my mom and dad who haunt me. Hats off to Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn and Emmylou Harris whose music inspired, and to Woody Guthrie whose book Bound for Glory (Plume, 1983) shaped the sound of “Bound for Glory” and whose lyrics kicked-off every installation in “La La’s Guthriecrucian Songbook: A Bildungsroman.” Boots up to the China Cowboy that once stood on East Colfax for this collection’s title, and to all the cowgirls and cowboys who sparked what’s good about these characters, and to all the angels and devils who ignited what’s badder.

China Cowboy / 115

China Cowboy appears in part in Absent, Action Yes, Big Ugly Review, Elective Affinities, Eleven Eleven, Kadar Koli, PEN America, Sink Review, Sixth Finch, Sonora Review, and Starlight Philadelphia. A chapbook excerpt, Run, was released by Rope-a-Dope. Thank you to the journal and press editors who published China Cowboy and Run, especially Mary Walker Graham and the R-A-D collaborative, especially Christian Peet and Tarpaulin Sky.

About the Author

China Cowboy / 117

Kim Gek Lin Short is also the author of The Bugging Watch & Other Exhibits (Tarpaulin Sky Press) and the chapbooks Run (Rope-a-Dope) and The Residents (dancing girl press). China Cowboy is her second full-length collection.

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