yun qin wang


[Café Müller is about exhaustion]

(To Tom Nobrega)

Yesterday I took a bus to Bilbao and flew to Brussels, I rushed to the North Station for the fastest 
    train to Köln, got off and bought coffee, hopped on another one to Wuppertal. I checked into a 
    cheap hotel, changed my pants to skirt, took the light rail 

to Tanztheater.

What was showing was Café Müller. 

My seat was in the last balcony row. I watched everything over everyone’s head. 

As now I recount these to you, Natasha in War and Peace comes to my mind. 

I was trying to write a poem about her, it goes:

          Oedipus’ Cry

    You come to a theatre, 
    wanting change. Then things change 
    to what they seem. 
    Because you have turned off the light 
    & handed me a scarf to cover your eyes, 
    you are still in the opera box. 
    The lake simmers beneath the moon
    which is a hole in the trees, 
    cardboards. Unlike you, 
    I’d rather be a jewel maker, grieved 
    by that beautiful brooch 
    doomed to pierce a baby’s foot, put out a man’s eye. 
    I’d rather be the tormented shepherd. 
    All sounds hushed, 
    expect for a staccato of trees. 
    There’s a pimple on your left thigh. I get up. 

Finding the stage ridiculous, Natasha imagined herself flying out from her seat. She kicked, 
    danced under the ceiling. A gush of adrenaline. And then Anatole came in, sat down beside 
    her. 

I want to be in love.

Wupper, the river. Tal, valley. 

Wuppertal is a valley-town squeezed by two mountains and extends endlessly along Wupper. A 
    club opened recently, called “Open Ground.” The idea is to create with its sound system a 
    place where one feels as if listening alone to the DJ in a

field.

Everyone collapsed in the dance. 

A woman wraps her arm around a man’s neck, the man holds out his other arm, the woman leaps 
    into his embrace then slowly falls back to the floor… The woman jumps up, wrapping one 
    arm around the man’s neck, the man holds out his other arm, the woman leaps into his 
    embrace then slowly falls back to the floor… The woman jumps up, wrapping one arm 
    around the man’s neck, the man holds out his other arm, the woman leaps into his embrace 
    and… 

[Refrain]

Eating persimmons with G and Y. The persimmons are astringent. Y gets up to rinse their mouth; 
    I chew slowly.

When will I exhaust my language? 


The Question of Godard’s Tout Va Bien (1972) 

        Susan has a fight with her husband. The husband wants to keep their old lifestyle while she  
wants a change. They visit a sausage factory. The workers go on a strike, occupying the office  
building, as Susan interviews the manager on his thoughts about the recent strikes. I’ve been  
organizing a series of concerts after the protests in China. In one of them, one performer asks  
questions, the other answers with a plastic bag over their head, a set of contact mic mounted  
inside to amplify their breathing. The performance lasted twelve minutes. Godard returned to  
cinema. 1980, his “second first film” experimented in the use of slow motion. The camera’s  
excessive attention  

        makes Paul’s attack—as he knocks Denise down and they roll together on the floor— romantic, 
and his kiss for Celine, sullen. From then on, Godard moved away from narrative. Last  fall, on a 
dinner party with a group of writers, a lady asked me if I knew Mike, Louise,  Alexandria, 
writers who had visited Iowa City. Yes, I’ve met them. She seemed pleased and  nodded. I was 
refilling my wine. A lady asked me if I knew Mike, Louise, Alexandria, writers  who had visited 
Iowa City. Yes, I’ve met them. She seemed pleased and nodded. Something so  important.


Chinese Space
One kneels on its hind leg, 

one stands. There are two horses in my hands that rely on each other.  

Because I’m leaving again, I’m selling the table 

smudged with graphite. There’s a relationship between the scenery 

and the way I speak. I’m inside  

so it’s hard to interact with the mountains 

behind many modern high-rises. 

Aspen leaves flitter against each other because wind has uneven lengths.  

Everything was like a party at first  

then became crazy. A cat sunbathes on a long  

decayed wall. Waves surge like a crowd. 

There is a big ship in my mind which slips away when I wake up.

yun qin wang grew up in Shanghai. They have been hosting Reading Room, a music radio show, since 2022. Lately, they’re learning the trumpet.