The Queen of SLAMHAI!II Susie Gordon

Queen of SLAMHAI! Susie Gordon

Another year almost gone by, and another winner of the infamous SLAMHAI! Competition was tight this time around, not the least as ruling champion Mark Butler came back all the way from his cozy cocktail fueled comfort down in Thailand to defend the title. 10 poets started out in round 1, one stronger than the other. Susie Gordon, the flying Lasky brothers, Ginger wRong Chen, Mark Butler, Katrina Hamlin, Danielle LeClerc, Darcy Fischer, Willow Neilson, Hunter Braithwaite and Tom Mangione…

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Shanghai Super Swedes

by Christine Forte

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The Broken Comb

by Katrina Hamlin

I live alone, apart from the cockroaches. My room is on the ground floor, down a lane. The house is as old as the People’s Republic. Damp is climbing up the walls, and the paint is peeling. I lock up my bicycle outside. At night, someone tucks it in under a blue tarpaulin. I have never seen who does this.

A line of chamber pots sits along the wall behind the bikes, drying in the wind. Further along the lane, the elderly couple keep tortoises in a porcelain basin. They settle a plank over the basin at night. The couple has a friend from one of the upstairs rooms. The man is old in an ageless way – he could be fifty, or one hundred and fifty. He comes down to the lane in his slippers. If the weather is warm, he doesn’t bother with trousers: He teams a bobbly sweater with dirty white long johns.

Around the corner from the tortoises’ basin, by the main entrance, there is a passageway to the street. Every morning a shabby mash of boxes unfurls into a dumpling stall. They sell vegetable jiaozi, tea boiled eggs, toufu patty and pickled greens. I think the proprieters are somehow related to the elderly couple. I exchange courtly nods with them  on my way to work, and the customers scoot on their stools to let me pass.

When the gate is shut at night, and my heavy door is locked, I feel as though I am in a fortress. Or a prison cell. I don’t really have windows, just little chinks the size of a catflap, too high for me to look out. That’s why I couldn’t see what was happening, though I heard everything.

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Pretty Fly for a Laowai II – MC Susie

by S. C. Gordon

They say I’m
Pretty fly for a laowai
But they don’t know shit,
Cos I’m the flyest of them all.

I’m the word bird,
Maybe you’ve heard.
I write rhymes that’ll hit you
Verse that’ll shit you
Like a dog that bit you.

When I hop up outta bed,
Turn my swag on.
Trippin’ through the neighborhood,
Put some tunes on.
Got my bling, got my swing, do my thing.
Got my waiguo huzhao,
Xinjiang shaokao –
Drop it like it’s hot,
Rappin’ on the spot,
Spinnin’ rhymes,
Doin’ time.

They say I’m
Pretty fly for a laowai,
But they don’t know jack,
Cos I’m the flyest mothafucka of them all.

Pretty Fly for a Laowai I – Jason

by Jason Lasky

I’m the laowai supreme,
I’m a supersized dream.
I’m the epic playa,
I’m the workin’ acta’,
I’ve got a pen and a pad
And the mind to drive you mad.
I’m pretty fly for a laowai-
2010 Shanghai.

The neon lights,
The drugs delight,
The drinks are cheap
Facebook is BLEEEEEEEP.
Firey episodic lust
Pass me that New York Style Pizza crust.
It’s Sunday brunch,
I’ve got a hunch
That I’ll stick around
On this Chinese merry-go-round
Because I’m pretty fly for a laowai-
2010 Shanghai.

Gimme a stage,
This is my age
I’ve got nothin’ to lose
Walking in these custom-made shoes.
I’m pretty fly for a laowai-
2010 Shanghai.

Mind Tamer

by Darcy Fischer

I am a trainer

Standing on a tall platform whipping my voice

Defending myself from the wild beasts

Who attack my patience with their sharp high pitched screams.

I stand on the platform with a mission

to educate  minds who are not in the environment to learn.

Who are fenced in a room of concrete walls and steel windows

A prison caging young wild imaginations

I stand on a platform with my tools to train the brain

To be obedient, orderly and adjusted to the rules

Walking like puppets

Strings held by their conscious

Tangled by order and formulas developed in curriculums studied

Programmed to act and react in a specific way

And punished for being different

Groupthink Nov.21st-6pm

Happy Birthday Groupthink! You’re officially one year old plus 5 days. Yep. Naturally I’d like to take this opportunity to say a few words, please bear with me: The face of Groupthink has changed drasticaly since it’s inception and blah blah blah something about tequila fuck whatever.

FANTASY Groupthink: surprisingly bereft of prancing fairies, orcs and ogres. No complaints here, I’m on a Harry Potter bender and I’m about 4,000 pages deep in the shit (you think I’m joking but I’m not).

The definite highlight of the night was Christine Forte’s All the Beauty in China. Love found and lost in almost the same instant in a compelling period drama that transcends the time in which it transpires. This is an instant HAL classic from straight out of left field. One of the most creative and beautiful pieces we’ve had the honour of featuring on our humble website. Bravo Christine.

Next up two-time comer, first-time submitter Stefan Schear. Hear hear! Read it here! Cheers! HAL be lovin’ it.

Nashville psychobilly Miller Wey put down his banjo, six-shooter and highfalutin’ ways to pick up the pen and regale us with the fantastical Traveler’s Rest. Interesting intersection of East and West, both in setting and the various classical tales alluded to in this peach of a short. Wait for it.

Birthday birthday and all that, I was prompted to dig dig through the HAL archives to see see what we had posted before in the fantasy line. One of my personal favorites: The Magic Dumplings. Did we ever meet that guy Paul Paul? If so I don’t remember, but I love this story.

All you haters…you know what to do.

Next Groupthink:

Date: November 21st, 2010 – 6pm 6pm 6pm

Where: Bell Cafe in Tianzifang (Taikang Lu)

Topic: – choose one of the two:

• the apartment below
• Christmas with Butler in Bangkok

All the Beauty in China

by Christine Forte

In the year of our Lord 1295, my first husband Giovanni celebrated his 40th birthday. I remember this because it was the same year that Marco Polo returned to Venice from his travels in Asia. In my husband’s honor, Duke Contarini threw a gala in the Palazzo Ducale, inviting all the most important merchants and politicians from the city as well as whichever foreign dignitaries and merchants were in town. Being only 18 myself, I was too young and naïve to understand that actually the gala was a ruse for the Duke to raise money for the war that he planned to wage against the Genoans. Nonetheless, it was the largest event the newly completed palace had ever seen and people talked about it for many years after. There were silk tapestries made specially for Giovanni, tables and chairs were handcrafted, dozens of musicians hired, gigantic barrels of wine rolled in. Continue reading…

The Descendants

by Stefan Schear

Cold night air bit at her rosy cheeks. The stairway to the train was a surging swamp of bodies. Kuan surrendered to the pull of the crowd, allowed herself to be lifted upward and carried like a rag doll to the platform. She let the tension and myopia of work seep from her muscles, and dreamed of home.

Just through the doors and they groaned shut, ripping jackets and dividing families. There was always the next train, she thought. In six hours. Maglevs heading west to Tibet ran on a sparse schedule, so once every six hours wasn’t bad for New Year’s traffic. She pulled the hood of her sweatshirt tight and closed her eyes, losing herself in the grind of metal on the cheap headphones.

Kuan was traveling alone. She hated crowds, which was unfortunate for a factory worker living in the Shanghai sprawl. This was the only time of year when she could return to the relative open space of Tibet, to the mystical clouds of her childhood. Continue reading…

I Think She’s Kind of Ugly

by Dena

Her voice on water
comes across the table,
seething round the rim of
her glass. The waiter
tips more, no ice. Her
voice on no ice is colder.
The starch between us is
miles of muslin tundra, acres, too big
for an explorer to scotch, cover, pass.

What starts hot ends cold. She likes
the snow, the rot underneath when
the sun comes around again. Me.

There is no me. I vanish into each
year, bloody and more lavish than
a golden ghetto coke spoon. Her
breasts quiver in their sweet cage. I
prickle at their salute. I fuck off.