Cover art, Pixabay photo by MariaKray.
22 Degree Halo[1]
All of a sudden, the cirrostratus clouds were blown away,
Like a shoal of fish pushed away by ocean currents, like a Gardenia flower shedding its petals
“It feels like event horizon here, or an acoustic vacuum, as if you are temporarily deafened by a big blast;
Countenances of all seraphs above are shifting and melting away in the scattered light.”
–Little Joe, what are you so absorbed in?
–The way tiny salt grains falling on a sheet of damp watercolor paper and blooming into giant snowflakes
is something other than dissolution, more similar to erosion, which breaches strokes of any color around it
–Salt is like solitude itself, wiping out everything in its way
His twisted off the lid of his fern-green thermos, and found a beam of sunlight hidden in it like a fledging bird
Then he opened a box of biscuit sticks, near-expiry, sprouting new bones day by day
Windmills lined the road, Roman aqueducts were everywhere too
“Blue hiking jackets are not for you…
It takes a buffer zone as wide as the sky to cool you down.”
She was in 5 o’clock direction, wearing a scarlet scarf,
Talking while walking away from you
(“There are two different versions of this paragraph,:
A: He asked her for directions
She was the only living thing he met, when he drove through all those deserted ghost villages
As if all were recently vaporized
B: The woman was just a reflection, on the soap film of his vision.”)
He abridged and revised, smoking one cigarette after another, luckily the disturbing telephone has not rung once yet
Whistling kettle in the kitchen quieted down too
So he took a sip, and stamped on the paper with the wet lid–
No words on it survived, for many centimeters around
[1] Halos form when light from the sun or moon is refracted by ice crystals associated with thin, high-level clouds (like cirrostratus clouds). A 22 degree halo is a ring of light 22 degrees from the sun (or moon) and is the most common type of halo observed and is formed by hexagonal ice crystals with diameters less than 20.5 micrometers. Light undergoes two refractions as it passes through an ice crystal and the amount of bending that occurs depends upon the ice crystal’s diameter. A 22 degree halo develops when light enters one side of a columnar ice crystal and exits through another side. The light is refracted when it enters the ice crystal and once again when it leaves the ice crystal.
22度日晕
风吹散鱼群如栀子花瓣。
“这是声音的真空——好比爆炸后的瞬间失聪。
百里内的他们和它们，有融化在光芒里形状莫测的面部。”
——乔治，为什么盯着它发呆？
——盐粒落在湿水彩纸上呈现雪花形状的过程，
不像化掉：它仿佛腐蚀掉了周围原本的颜色。
——也许盐，是一种以孤独吞并一切的物质。
他拧开烟绿色暖水瓶。日光藏在里面如一只雏鸟。
一盒条状饼干，尚算新鲜，每天都在长出新骨头。
前面的村落有风车、罗马式引水桥。
“蓝色冲锋衣不适合你，
它并没有天空那么大足以让你冷却下来。”
这是一个红色头巾的女子，在5点钟方向。，
一边说话，一边离开。
（“这个地方可以有两个版本，他拉住那个女子问路，
要知道他走过的村庄和农场，没有见到人、猫、犬类或牛羊活物——
空荡得就像蒸发掉。
或者那女子只是他的眼睛和心在夕阳水边制造出的另一个自己。”）
删改。一支烟接着另一支。电话安静下来。
沸腾的水壶安静下来。
他端起杯子，以主人公的名字为中心按下一个水印圈——
是的，方圆几厘米，再没有美妙的名词存活。
A Geomagnetic Storm Occurred
“Human antennae for electromagnetic waves are no more than rudimentary organs now,
With their clairvoyance paralyzed, people are not longer able to detect the drifts of electrons above, which float like salmon eggs
hatching in the aurora, dropped down into the skulls of those exposed to nocturnal fluorescence.”
Scene 1: The elf-like aquatic mammal jumped out of water, shaking off crystal-clear water-drops
Its dorsal fin shining like a treble clef on a streamline
“It’s singing ‘Lakmé’…What a miracle! There’s an irresistible electromagnetic interference between me and this creature,
Which lured me here in sleepwalking.” With his arms wide open, the man swam towards his Muse
(“What’s wrong with him? It’s just an ordinary dolphin!”
In the gastric juice of a geomagnetic storm, everybody is stranded like semi-fluid food. On the screen of a thermal imaging camera,
Their chests are the same orange hue)
Scene 2: “You look strange today, mon chéri…What’s happening?”
Her curious grayish-blue gaze sweeping rapidly around the rooftop garden left silver spots on the ground
She leaned on the arbor, as if saying “Am I?”
“I like the naughty you at this moment, you always get into character too much.”
Scene 3: The restless turtledove made the lunatic start back
It caught a flying shuttlecock, and then played with the double-circle wind chimes like jumping through a flaming hoop
Now it dived deep into the pool
“Bro, guess what? This is an asylum for crazy people, not crazy birds…”
Suddenly the dolphin turned away and disappeared into abysmal waters
The grayish mist drained out from the woman’s eyes
She did not know why she was on the rooftop(acrophobia inhibited her from even performing on an acrylic stage)
The lunatic rescued the turtledove from the pool: “Catch’a…easy, don’t move…”
“Incredible!” He muttered to himself. putting the script back in his briefcase
“That was just like crossed phone-lines, bringing us more surprises than scariness.
You broadcaster one minute ago is out of studio now,
Back to Mississippi to continue his art lessons.”
磁暴过境
“那一年人类接收电磁波的触角频段已接近封闭，
高空的环电流粒子像包藏祸心的鱼卵，
怒放于极光，落下并在头颅中孳生。”
（Part 1）那跃出水面之躯，甩开乱琼碎玉，妙曼如神祗。
背鳍在空中划出与高音同步的弧线。
“是《拉克美》选段……它与我的场发生干扰，
将我从睡梦中引诱到此。”男人张开双臂向水中走去。
（“他怎么了？那不过是一只海豚而已。”
磁暴的胃液里，所有人都是半流质食物。热量模型中，
他们的胸腔闪耀着高温的橙色。）
（Part 2）——你今天看起来不寻常，mon chéri，
觅食的目光落在四野化作银斑。
（她倚着屋顶花架，神色在说：“是吗？”）
——我喜欢你这一刻的活泼，你平时太过入戏，沾染了歌剧的悲情。
（Part 3）斑鸠每靠近一步，疯子就尖叫并后退一步。
它接住了飞来的羽毛球，它在高处的铁环中钻来钻去。
它向水面飞去似乎要一头潜入。
“Bro，guess what? 这里是给疯人呆的地方，不是给疯鸟的……”
海豚口哨中突然循声溜走；
女人的眼睛由灰蓝变为红褐，她打了个喷嚏，
不知道为何自己会站在楼顶（她甚至拒绝在舞台太高的歌剧院演出）；
险些溺水的斑鸠，被疯子捞了上来；“抓住你了，别怕……”
“看起来不可思议。”他收拾着讲稿对着镜头说，
“只是一场串线而已，当然，今后它也许还会带给我们更多惊奇。
而刚才给你们播音的人，灵魂要折返密西西比了，
——他的美术课正讲到一半。”
A Hole-punch Cloud
In the center of dense altocumulus clouds, there was a gaping hole, dazzlingly golden
–a butterfly net ready for those elusive beams gliding past
with gauzy wings, which were skillfully dashing against the vent enmeshed in threads of light
The vast land underneath was sparsely scattered with buses and pickups. Before a hurricane drew out gory thorns hidden in them,
Firstly the wind would tear down the outdoor advertisements on the skyscrapers…
You should have sealed the tiny windows with resin just in case.
（“Where is your dad? A storm is coming.”
“He went to the forest this morning to collect rare species of insects.”）
————————————-Specimens———————————————-
17th Floor:
(A piece of the mackerel sky dropped out from his left eye, like a contact lens,
A streak of virga hung down from a cloud like a fish tail. He was sitting right below in its shadow,
on the despicably geometricized chair.)
“God has walked out of his halo… For the world, at this moment, a larger DOF made the fallen leaves too fluffy to distinguish.”
–Page 167, “HIStory”
15th Floor:
“SLD (‘Supercooled Large Droplets’) is a necessary condition, which are liquid below 0°C…Ice crystals fall straight downwards but were vaporized again before reaching the ground. A hole-punch cloud is born this way.”
Select the one most similar in logic to the text above:
(A) “Sorry for upsetting all of you… It was not like that I went astray from track. When I was dashing towards the finish line, it suddenly dawned on me that winning the tournament meant nothing to me. I did not know what I was there…It was silly, trying so hard to prove yourself. So I kept on running, but in a different direction—over the mountain range. Then I lay down there on the hillside, with the earworm of “Caresse Sur L’ocean” echoing in my head, singing spontaneously… its lyrics fell from my lips like soap bubbles and were set adrift by the wind…”
(B) The trail of blood was not leading to hell directly.
apheliotropism, inconsistent gravity…product of all relative factors
He never really arrived at the destination.
Like a demon turned away by a mirror, he stood in front of it, collapsing very slowly into hallucinations
Then he was glued up by fibers of reality again.
(C) Soldiers on both sides were two-faced cowards. During the rough-and-tumble fighting, they sneaked over into each others’ base camps under cover of darkness…Two groups of scale armors stormed from the east and west ends of the earth into each other.
Like the convection between day and night, yellow and blue.
Each soldier ended up in a void left by an known enemy.
(D) In every nine men there was a two-faced one. They stood in a circle, against the dusky horizon and steep cliffs
They cast their capes downwards first, which became hawks. “Ready to go?”
“A shiver ran through my frame from the shoulder blades to the feet
You can see the reflection of this chilliness on the curtain of clouds behind me, like an azureish glacier hole.”
They turned around, only to see him losing his footing and falling into the abysm
8th Floor:
(He was an objector to weather broadcasts in this building.
Luckily the juicer in his kitchen inspired him: “chaos” is the demagnetizer of everything.)
ChannelⅠ：“…The cheetah broke cover and stole up to its prey from behind, soon starting to pick up speed…”
ChannelⅡ：“…then we pour sauce all over it, which we had made previously with cheese, chopped basil and garlic, and stir it a little…”
Channel Ⅲ： “Get out of my f*** face before I change my mind and kill you, son of a b****!” “Adieu, imbecile!”
Channel Ⅳ：“…according to the witness, he smashed the shop window with a brick and broken in, torn apart and destroyed everything on the shelf, then swaggered out of the door, his motives are still unclear…”
Channel N：“… archaeologists confirmed that this pattern, a new derivative of paisley art…”
Channel N+1： “…increased by 7 percentage points to 42.9% as compared with the corresponding period last year…”
Channel N+2：“…his funeral by the Scioto River…”
He succeeded. When voices in all the channels started to rotate like a propeller , they became sharper and sharper, capable of cutting everything in its way
He fell asleep among the blades, until the white noise of the rain outside softened them into fluorescent pigments
1st Floor:
He looked at the xylem tubes of the world stretching upwards—they were dry while its leaves withering like tinfoil
Their buttress roots were skinny and riddled with dry rot, like the skeleton of a tower.
He knew a saturating rain was on its way here—acid, like a dark red swarm of spiders
Why was he standing bare-foot there? Waiting for somebody to ask him the way?
The fact was: he wanted to be right under that golden hole
When he looked up at the sky, it felt like he was diving into a deep lake, against the pull of gravity
雨幡洞云
密集的波浪云间，这无法以凡胎肉眼直视的金环张开
——一张捕捉蝴蝶的亮网。
锡箔纸翅膀，最擅于冲击光芒发丝笼罩的出口。
大地上散乱堆放着大巴和皮卡。在它们被飓风扯出血荆棘之前，
摩天大楼上的巨幅海报必须被剥裂殆尽，
而后将高处细密的窗户灌注树脂定形。
（“你父亲去哪了？恐怕天气要变。”
“一早去雨林采集昆虫标本了……”）
————————————–抽样调查结果———————————————-
十七楼：
（鱼鳞自眼睛析出，隐形镜片一般积在桌上。
雨幡无风的空中以鱼尾节奏轻晃。与此相对，
他的椅子呈现可鄙的人造几何形状。）
“上帝已祂的光环中走开，与落叶混同的背影却加大景深而无法散去。”
——截自日记第167页
十五楼：
“必须具备超冷却雾滴，它呈现液态……云中冰晶以降水形式下落，却在降到地面前蒸发，形成雨幡洞云。”请选出原理类似的一项：
（A）“抱歉让大家担心。我并非从跑道上简单消失了。接近终点的时候，我突然觉得这锦标毫无意义，于是翻过山，躺在开满文殊兰的山坡上，脑海中不断重播老电影插曲Caresse Sur L’ocean，我便不由自主唱了起来。太奇妙了，那些歌词就像我唇边长出的花朵，遮蔽了我压倒的花枝形成的缺口……”
（B）血迹并非笔直引向地狱。
潜伏元素中的背光性，地心引力时断时续的牵引……
他并未真正到达。
他像一个被镜子拒之门外的魔鬼，坐下，在幻象中坍塌，
又被现实无端复原。
（C）双方士卒各持异心。混战中他们在铠甲掩护下，投奔对方群落，仿佛风暴鳞甲从大地一隅向另一隅翻滚。
昼夜互换，青蓝对流。
他们如此自然地填补敌军的空位。
（D）九个人中有一个异己。他们背对悬崖与黄昏，
擅长抛下黑色长袍化作岩鹰。“精心匿藏的凉气从肩胛骨后逸出。
同时也投影在背后天幕，仿佛蓝冰溶洞。”
他们转身，见他踩空沦为滚石。
八楼：
（他是这楼中最坚定的天气预报反对者。
榨汁机给了他启发：混沌乃是冲刷干扰信息的不二法门。）
频道Ⅰ：“……猎豹已从伪装下走出，蹑手蹑脚接近猎物。它的奔跑速度越……”
频道Ⅱ：“……浇上之前奶酪、罗勒叶和大蒜研磨的酱汁，稍加搅拌……”
频道Ⅲ：……“在我改变主意之前，滚出这家酒馆！”“后会有期，混蛋！”……
频道Ⅳ：“……据目击者称他用砖头砸碎了超市玻璃并闯入，在对过道两侧货架上的商品进行大肆破坏之后大摇大摆走出了大门，其动机至今……”
频道N：“……考古学家认为这种纹饰……”
频道N+1：……“比去年同期增长了7个百分点”……
频道N+2：“……出席了他在赛欧托河畔举行的葬礼……”
他成功了。声音旋转起来远比刀片锋利。
刀光剑影间他从容入睡，直到雨的本尊抢在声响之前不期而至。
一楼：
他望着向上输送营养的管道日渐枯竭，
墙体瘦薄，仅剩筋皮，佝偻的高塔在远方被夕阳泡化。
一场雨就要到来——酸性的，一群从天而降的暗红蜘蛛。
他赤足站在那里干什么？等着陌生人过来问路？
事实是，他想站在那个金色的空洞下。
仰面的时候，就像从引力密集处逆向投入湖泊。
Limb Darkening
I already noticed it, when your eyes moved straight from the “Age” column to my “Medical history”
Obviously, your throat temperature was rising while looking that way(if you had the Adam’s apple, it would have floated up by now like an airtight seal button), making the sound of a whistling kettle on the stove. You felt goose bumps mushrooming from underneath your skin, especially on the back of your hands
You drew a circle around the two words–“low hypnotizability”, which you had written down one moment ago, along its diameter
A thought just crossed your mind: Lucky that I was your client instead of your husband
I have the most untamable mind in the history of psychological treatments. I was always way too sober, even soberer than you, so you were afraid of me…
—
—
**********************************************
“This kind of virus was first discovered in sunflowers, but it has acquired the capacity of taking over its host —human —completely …”
The whisperer (you could barely distinguish his penumbra from the gloomy emptiness around him in that room) woke you up by pushing your arm slightly
before that, shapes of ice and rocks seemed to diffuse your field of vision for centuries
–they were pollen particles and pigment cells under a microscope. Now that you are awake
They become phantasmagorically fickle, seething with geothermal energy…
Your eyes were on the rampage and hysteric mitosis of its cells began…
Only a blade could ever cut off your connections with the tree-knot-shaped spaces. So you hacked and hewed with it…
Chestnut-color cattle sank into the soft tissue…
**********************************************
“So I woke up again in the first 3 minutes after put under hypnosis?”
“I’m so puzzled: how did you know? ”
“I was still able to see when I lost my eyes.”
**********************************************
You kept talking to him. You two were enclosed by ice and snow from all sides, in the way a werewolf got covered swiftly by stiff hair on a full-moon night
“I was young then, I thought I could have an unforgettable encounter with the aurora, and have its emerald light tattooed on my chest…”
You were a deserter running away from the battle field and into the tundra
You tapped him on the shoulder but suddenly he snapped into half, as if he were not a person
but a giant club cactus (Now there were his thorns all over your camouflage clothing.)
*********************************************
“You are such a sensitive person! You realize it every time. What made you suspicious? The cactus?”
“No, because I never had company.”
……
“Let’s try again, if we fail, you are free to leave… See? the door is open, over there.”
“No trigger can ever escape my eagle eyes. I’m sorry for always waking up within several seconds.”
*********************************************
The moor stricken by lightning was like an intertidal area underwater at high tide. Twigs raised by the wind swirled as if they were cardinals
The white-bearded man was towing a boat with cloud-white sails, leaving a snail trail in the sand
He turned his head and looked at you. He picked up the wooden whistle from the ground again and again and put it in his pocket, which had a hole at the bottom
He refrained from speaking to you, but then he found a thick club in his boat and threw it at you
You fended it off with your muscular radius, but it really hurt, and was as realistic as a bucket of ice on your face
You wanted to give him a fatal blow: with silver arrows of moonlight, sharp stones or a ruthless ploughshare
You recalled that every time you woke up, this man was standing in front of you in different medical scrubs
But now, he was sitting there, in a coffee-colored computer chair
blinking at you and beckoning you to break through the screen between you
You pretended to approach him but turned around and smacked yourself against the air
You know there was an invisible wall beside you
And blood stains appeared
……
“Good lord, you are coming to life, finally! Your brainwaves were so active, I almost thought there was something detaining you in your long sleep.”
“So here is the ONE reality? Who am I then?”
“A military surgeon, hit by a stray bullet…You were the only survivor in that hell of a battle.”
临边昏暗
你目光正从年龄向病史栏漂移，目测速度3mm/毫秒。
喉部温度升高，发出水壶的临界响声。体表有鸡皮疙瘩微微隆起，尤其手部。
你即将拿起红笔，在“极难被催眠”几个字上画上红圈，至少前两个字必然完整在圈内。
一个闪念掠过你脑际：幸亏我是你的客户而非丈夫。
是的，我有你们治疗史上最强大的内心。我的清醒，是你们恐惧的源头……
——
——
——
“这是一种最早发现于向日葵中的植物病毒，但已经具备了将人体作为寄主的本领……”
低语的人（房间中一个模糊的黑色轮廓）轻轻推醒你之前，
冰封、色彩诡异的岩石挤满整个视野。
——它们是显微镜下的花粉颗粒、色素细胞，一旦你醒来，
它们开始变形、膨胀、相互挤压，冒着低鸣的地热。
你无法驾驭濒临破碎的眼睛：盲从的细胞开始了疯狂的有丝分裂……
只有刀刃能割断与树瘤状空间的关联。你举起刀，一刀，两刀……
栗色的耕牛在迸裂的柔软组织间陷下去……
**********************************************
“果然我又在前三秒醒了过来，对吗？”
“你如何知道自己并非在现实中？”
“失去眼睛后我依然能看见。”
**********************************************
你一直和他对话，冰雪从边缘开始覆盖你们头顶，如同月圆之夜硬毫爬上狼人面部。
“那时我很小，以为与极光撞个满怀，胸口会留下墨绿暗痕……”
这是逃离战场的第三天，月光下冒泡的苔原。
你用手肘推推他，那吱嘎的身体折断了——瞬间塌陷的不是一个人，
是一人高的暗红仙人掌。（荧光的刺深陷在你迷彩服皱褶间。）
*********************************************
“又被你识破了。是因为苔原仙人掌这个情节太荒诞吗？”
“因为我从不和人结伴。”
……
“再试一次，如果还不成功，你可以走——门就在那边。”
“我太擅于发现每个场景里的触发开关，一不小心，就落回到现实了。”
……
*********************************************
闪电唤醒的沼泽宛如夜晚的潮间带。枯枝脱离树桩变为旋飞的雀群。
拉纤的络腮胡拖曳白色船只留下蜗牛般划痕。
他回头狐疑地看你。他不断捡起木哨放进有一个破洞的上衣兜。
他欲言又止，他捡起一根粗木棒，向你袭来。
你以桡骨阻挡，那疼痛真实得像迎面浇来的冰块。
你寻找可以杀透他的物体：银色光线、石块或更冷的犁铧。
你想起在每个醒来的场景中，这个男人作医生装束，
此时屏幕外他坐着，在可可色的高背椅上。
他眨眨眼睛，示意你穿过屏幕。
但你转身向空中猛烈撞去，
你知道那里是一堵墙，虽然看起来什么也没有。
空中出现了悬挂的血印。
……
“谢天谢地，你终于醒来了。你脑电波一直非常活跃，却抗拒着苏醒的欲望。”
“不要告诉我这里才是现实……那么我是谁？”
“你曾经是军医，被流弹击中，成了植物人。你是那战役中唯一的生还者。”
Yin Xiaoyuan( “殷晓媛” in Chinese) is an avant-garde, crossover epic poet as well as a multi-genre & experimental writer, founder of Encyclopedic Poetry School (est. 2007), initiator of Hermaphroditic Writing Movement and numerous crossover projects with international poets/musicians/artists.
She graduated from Beijing International Studies University. She is member of Writers’ Association of China, Translators’ Association of China and Poetry Institute of China. She has published 11 books including 5 poetry collections: Ephemeral Memories (2010), Beyond the Tzolk’in (2013), Avant-garde Trilogy (2015), Agent d’ensemencement des nuages (2017) and Cloud Seeding Agent (Pinyon Publishing, USA)
Her works have been translated into 50+ languages and published in magazines and included in anthologies. She was invited to poetic festivals including “Poetry Vicenza” (Italy, 2020+2022), “Bitola Literary Circle” and “Aco Karamanov” poetry festivals (North Macedonia). She co-edited “POESÍA SIN FRONTERAS VII–Antología de poesía chino-española” with Jaime B. Rosa (Olelibros, 2021).
She is a mountaineering enthusiast who travelled across China 3 times between 2018 and 2023 with remarkable experiences with great mountains.
殷晓媛
“百科诗派”创始人、智库型长诗/小说/诗剧/实验文本作者、“泛性别主义”写作首倡者。中国作家协会、中国诗歌学会、中国翻译协会会员。出版诗集《印象之内，物象之外》（2010）、《它们曾从卓尔金历中掠过》（2013）、《前沿三部曲》（2015）、《播云剂》（中文版，2017）及《Cloud Seeding Agent》（英文版，美国Pinyon Publishing出版社，2020）及多部译著。作品被译为50多种外语，发表、广播、被改编成音乐单曲及并收录入多种国际选集。与西班牙诗人杰姆·B.罗萨联合主编《无国界诗歌VII：中国-西班牙当代诗人》（西班牙Olelibros出版集团，2021）。受邀参加“Poetry Vicenza诗歌节”（意大利，2020+2022）、“Bitola Literary Circle”诗歌节（北马其顿）、“Aco Karamanov诗歌节”等多届国际诗歌盛事。曾三次独自游历全国名山大川，攀登泰山、黄山、华山、衡山、嵩山、峨眉山、五台山等。
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