Secrets of a Wounded City
The city is too quiet
to be real
Let me dedicate it a song
The Secrets of A Wounded City
But you don’t hear it
in the deafening silence
A robin kills itself by
crashing onto the shiny glass screen of a highrise building
I am muted
A muted singer
I am blacklisted
A blacklisted song writer
I once grabbed all the significant music awards
All my albums were best sellers
I sold three platinum records
My wealth accumulated like I was printing money
Not even a decade ago
But I was arrested three times
I am on probation
and under surveillance
I was not a drunk driver
Nor was I in possession of weed
But there was a certain misconduct in the eye of the authorities
“Colluding with foreign forces to
produce and distribute seditious materials”
The seditious materials were an independent news outlet I helped fund
The foreign forces were our international correspondents and readers
Democracy is seditious
Freedom of speech is seditious
Human Rights are seditious
I lost the contract with a multinational cosmetic cooperation
I understand they couldn't miss the huge market
I didn’t have the face to wear their makeup anyway
I am banned from performing in many countries
Few governments can afford to offend my ruler
Touch a blade one millimeter from its edge you won’t be hurt
But I can’t control myself
For truth is there, edged
A fallen petal of bauhinia lies on the concrete pavement
deprived from its soil
from its brilliant nature
Let me dedicate my song
to this wounded city
It is too quiet to be real
Denise Ho, a Hong Kong pop music star, was an active supporter of the Umbrella Movement in 2014 and Anti-extradition protest in 2019. Now she is silenced, as were millions of pro-democracy Hong Kongers, by the draconian National Security Law implemented by China in 2020. Her song “Secrets of A Wounded City” was from a 2006 movie Confession of Pain.
C.J. Anderson-Wu (吳介禎) is a Taiwanese writer who has published two collections about Taiwan's military dictatorship (1949–1987), known as the White Terror: Impossible to Swallow (2017) and The Surveillance (2020). Currently she is working on her third book Endangered Youth—to Hong Kong. Her works have been shortlisted for a number of international literary awards, including the Art of Unity Creative Award by the International Human Rights Art Festival. She also won the Strands Lit International Flash Fiction Competition, the Invisible City Blurred Genre Literature Competition, and the Wordweavers Literature Contest. C. J. recommends Hong Kong Free Press.
