A Cavernous Joy

Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé
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“Why do we need handles for cooking pots?” The Fifth Dakini applies thermal shock to the conical shapes into a dwelling, low-fired and unusually soft to the touch, marshy like a molehill. “Grass is your fuel because it burns quickly like your plate armour,” the Second Dakini says, “use the dung cakes too.” Even the temperature gradient warps, like a voice exaggerated against something exclusionary, full of hems and haws. An eremitic existence is like this, filled with the comings and goings of newcomers, tourist class and meddlesome. “These dark days are filled with the stupid and asinine and insipid,” the Fifth Dakini observes with an abrupt, unsmiling levity,
“nothing’s worth shit-spit no more.” Janice Burnheart has poignant psalms for all these phenomena relativised against each other. Naked Psalm of the City Astronaut. Psalm of the Levitating Bungalow. Psalm of the Trailer Lovers and Psalm: It Must Be Our Pontification. The most popular of them all? Psalm of the Nuts-and-Bolts Outfitters.

Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé has edited more than 10 books and co-produced 3 audio books, several pro bono for non-profit organizations. He has recent or forthcoming work in Copper Nickel, Cricket Online Review, Folly, PANK, Presence, and Walnut Literary Review. Also working in clay, Desmond sculpts commemorative ceramic pieces for his Potter Poetics Collection.