by Wing Yau
One day you’ll wake up
when the black threads of your sewn heart
entangled like chained demisemiquavers
in an epic theme song.
Up in the sky you’ll sing:
“Happiness is not too high
when it’s upside down
like rain.”
Then you try another tune
straight from memory:
“Draw a circle & a dot.”1
Trick is, make sure the circle
is in a dot. Repeat
in a shrill child’s voice:
That’s Doraemon!
Crawl inside his amazing pocket — Dig
with heartfelt caution. Believe
all good things have already come true
for cats, and other cuteness in disguise.
So it’s never too late!
Pick up your bamboo-copter,
fly-dance with little fried birds
along made-believe contrails until
you’re a tangle of strings thrashing in the sky.
Save yourself an honest Dorayaki
cos you already know:
Happiness, yes, happiness
is a singing loop knot, mad
& high in the sky.
- The poem borrows some of the lyrics from the original Cantonese edition of the Doraemon theme song from the 80s. The cartoon also featured an additional song that explained how to draw the title character. Drawing a circle and a dot is the first step. ↩︎
© Wing Yau
Wing Yau is a Hong Kong-born poet. Wing’s work has appeared in 5 Islands Press, The Garlic Press, Hot Pot Magazine, Locative, and more. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Wing is currently based in Melbourne, Australia. Their debut poetry collection, The Fiction of Flying, is forthcoming in June 2025 by Puncher & Wattmann.
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