
in China
In China, on the subway, when the train and platform doors shut, if you’re pinched between both sets when the train departs, you’re torn in half, smearing blood and guts down the windows while folks on both sides read the morning news on iPhones. In China, escalators, with minor mechanical adjustments, become human meat grinders which, if they had lips, would lick them. You can see their chomping teeth turn. In China, people get revenge by dipping effigies of their enemies' pets in boiling gutter oil before blowing them up with leftover fireworks. There is a mobile app that does this virtually for a modest fee, if you don't wish to spend time on cleanup. In China, when it rains, umbrellas, yurts, and those weird-looking roofs dissolve, and people’s skins slide off like blanched peaches. Beneath them, you can see computer chips flexing muscles and beating hearts. The fish take to the trees for what the river becomes. In China, each child is born with a boxcar of textbooks, near-sighted spectacles, and a master’s of science in quantum physics. To accommodate this, the vagina dilates so much the mother turns inside out.
Featured image: ‘Run!!!!!’ by Jan Schrijver.