John Zheng
No Loitering
after William Ferris’s photograph No Loitering Sign, Mississippi Delta
The term painted in white on the earthy red wall of a closed corner store lies like a dead drunk in the shallow standing water on the concrete. No loafer roams around, no car booms past, no trotting dog lolls out its tongue and pees to claim territory. The Delta has its unique quiet and slowness: a liquor sign paling on the other side of the street, a pickup truck napping by the curb, a bayou covered with green scum, a cornfield rustling and browning in fall wind, a red-eared slider staying still on a fallen log, or a man languishing on a porch one late afternoon, but it also has a temper: a windstorm blowing a blues through woods and fields, a tornado flexing its muscles while twisting over small towns and hamlets. Whatever it is, life never loiters here; it plows the flatland into fresh green each spring.
forgotten churchyard
frequented by wind
headstones
appear to peer
among high weeds
About the Author
John Zheng has authored Enforced Rustication in the Chinese Cultural Revolution and published haibun and tanka prose in cho, Haibun Today, Southern Quarterly, and Spillway. His latest book is A Way of Looking, a collection of haibun and tanka prose.