Published in The Cimarron Review, Fall 2020

Here in this cemetery, some of the more elaborate graves have stone tables and round stools. My young sons are quite satisfied that they are for their occupants to play chess while we aren’t looking.

On the boundaries of Chinese megacities lie cities visitors never see. Vast cities where people of different religions, or none at all, gather as equals. Cities with spacious, clean thoroughfares lined with Amur maple and cedar trees, serviced by street vendors selling hot food and fresh flowers. In front of temples, there are stalls selling firecrackers and sandalwood, and for those inclined to spend more, incense of rare agarwood, extracted from the resinous hearts of Vietnamese aquilaria trees.

On the boundaries of Chinese megacities lie cities of the dead. Mega-cemeteries beyond the outermost of the concentric ring-roads that are these megacities’ planetary systems, each ring with its orbiting suburbs, cities in their own right. Read More at The Cimarron Review