Dark Night

By Chen Poyu
Translated from Taiwanese Mandarin by Nicholas Wong

A miniature gacha machine was moved to the sitting room during the Christmas season. If my sister and I behaved well, we would earn a chance to turn its crank. In each capsule, there was a note announcing our reward, usually some small privilege. “Sleeping with Mom and Dad in the Japanese-style room on weekdays”: not the grand prize, but it felt practical enough. Back then, I thought so, though who I am now is hostile to my former self, and he to me, as if we became entirely different people after being washed in the paint of time. On New Year’s Eve, the whole family crammed into a bedroom, compressed like a zipped file. In the dark, three uncanny bodies composed their own experimental music: all kinds of insects morphing out of the sounds of snoring, grinding teeth, and swallowing on rolling hills, flying toward me as if there were a goddamn camping lamp glowing inside my head. All I could do was remove the ticking clock from the wall and take it outside. 		

Early one morning, a car accident happened right at the intersection below. I didn’t wake up. In my dream, I heard a burglar alarm ringing incessantly, but no one seemed to care. Maybe it wasn’t a car accident? But I remembered seeing broken pieces scattered everywhere. Still, I didn’t wake up to verify. The next day, the intersection looked no different than usual outside my window. I took it as a car accident conjured in my head. It’s unsettling to realize how easily I could ascribe real sounds to dreams. 

暗夜中

聖誕節那個月小扭蛋機擺到客廳來。如果表現值得嘉獎，我或妹妹就能使用一次。蛋裡有張紙條，紙條上是獎賞內容，通常是某種特許。「平日與爸媽一起睡和室」：不是最大獎，卻堪稱實用。當時這麼想的我和現在的我敵視彼此，被澆淋一身時間油漆後已判若兩人。除夕夜全家擠入一間房的壓縮檔。暗夜中三具陌生身體發展著實驗音樂：連綿山丘上，打呼、磨牙、吞嚥聲變化各式各樣小蟲，朝我的頭橫衝直撞好像裡頭有盞該死的露營燈。我所能做的是把牆上喀喀喀個不停的時鐘拿到房外。

凌晨發生車禍，就在樓下十字路口。我沒醒來，夢裡聽見防盜鈴不停響沒人管。那或許不是車禍？但畫面中到處都是碎片。我沒醒來確認。隔天窗外的路口已和平常沒有兩樣。就當是夢裡發生了車禍吧。這樣輕易地把實實在在的聲音推給夢境，現在想起來真是令人不安。安。

Chen Poyu is a poet, translator and literary critic from Taipei. He has published essays and poetry collections, including The Art of Rivalry, winner of Yang Mu Literary Awards in 2024. His recent publication, The Basement Tapes, is a book of collaborative texts and illustrations with artist Kuo Chien Yu. His Chinese translation of Robert Hass’s Summer Snow was published in 2022. He was also named one of the Ten Most Anticipated Writers born in the 1990s by Wenhsun Magazine in Taiwan.

Nicholas Wong is a poet, translator, and visual artist from Hong Kong. He is the author of Crevasse, which won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, and Besiege Me, also a finalist for the same prize. His recent poems and translations appeared in Hunger Mountain, Beloit Poetry Journal, American Poetry Review, The Yale Review, among others. In 2024, he was an International Writing Program resident at the University of Iowa and currently teaches at the Education University of Hong Kong.