Fengdu
Infrastructure
You
don't see me down at the port with a fancy
basket to peddle a pig in. That's my patch of sweet
potatoes and two orange trees up the mountainside.
When
the big Water comes, no more sweet potatoes,
no more orange trees—ok, I guess—but where do our
ghosts go? Exactly all the ghosts that ever were in the
world. Here's where they land: Fengdu. Always have.
But not after the Water comes. You know a ghost'll
rest under 525 feet of water brown as dirt? Under all
that water they won't see the sky.
They
say they'll move a million people before the
Water. They move me, they pay me—they promise.
Biggest deal since the Great Wall,and the Great Wall’s
as far away, as long ago as there were peasants who
died in the last great floods. I'll take money. What'll
they give our ghosts?
--Susan
Holahan
Copyright © 1993 by Free Lunch Arts Alliance
|
