cave-man

BY ROBERT GAO

cave-man: the thin-lipped dreamer in the corner. the man who only speaks of polygonal topography, bloodlines asymmetrical to the bloody undergrowth. how in the dark, cave-man carves sigils out of charcoal: knuckles gathering red, a country elegized into the sins of an afterlife long forgotten. no repentance, no repentance: cave-man murmurs a psalm of the curse of immortalization, how he doesn’t trust fate to guide predestination. now faceless, cave-man camouflages into canopy, whispering xīn nián kuài lè as december compresses into the lip of nuclear winter. hearing the damp hollow of echoes, cave-man crawls on fours, rice grain and vegetation tattooed into kanji on his back, the gift of the blood god, japanese general saluting massacred bodies, cave-man mouth cupping into O and choking the silence of the moon; atonement, bulleted fruit, the new year wasting into the scars of the old. & cave-man grins a layer of banana teeth, watching katanas pour into monsoons, into the midsummer carnage.

TRANSLATIONS xīn nián kuài lè — Happy New Year

Robert Gao is a sophomore and Chinese-American writer at the University Laboratory High School in Urbana, Illinois. Focused on exploring the Sino diaspora, his works have been published in Best Teen Writing 2022 and nationally recognized by the National YoungArts Foundation, Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, Alliance for Young Writers, and New York Times. He is one of the founding members and serves as Poetry Editor-in-Chief for the Metaphysical Review.