Gush by Yo Hemmi

Author:Yo Hemmi [Hemmi, Yo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Counterpoint Press
Published: 2010-04-05T17:00:00+00:00

was about all I could make of it. She was young, but from time to time her voice cracked and turned hoarse and rasping. It always went up at the end of the flat, repetitive phrases, and she put more emphasis on the after beat than the early beat. It sounded like the song a young beggar girl we’d bumped into between Hanoi and Lang Son had sung to us as she nimbly beat out the rhythm on a pair of spoons held in her fingers. With no modulation until the rise in tone at the end of the line, it reminded me of the Buddhist sutras. This was just the right song for traveling on a dark night like this, I thought. As we pressed on, it felt as if we were trying to keep time with it.

Every so often I would imagine how the line of cyclos must appear across the paddy fields from a distance. The four cyclos gliding at equal intervals through the rank-smelling night. The tableau of our little caravan a rectangle cut out of the darkness with scissors. Suong, the young woman, Nyem and me … all sitting upright, immobile, gazing straight ahead. The girl’s hair was bunched into a ponytail that was streaming into the face of the driver behind her. The drivers were standing up off their saddles, gasping and panting as they leaned forward onto the pedals. We were like a procession of crows. Looking at the others, I wondered where we could be going on so dark a night.

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