Ouyang Malley: The Kingsbury Tales: the shirt

Lying in a corner of my room, the shirt
Is a gray color
I shed it as soon as I put it on this morning for the Court
As my back, the back of my neck, and, in fact, my whole upper trunk
Started getting itchy
It's a strange shirt in that sense for it never fails to make me itch
Far as I remember it this is a gift shirt from Ming my brother in October 1999
Back then, he was alive (what a redundant thing to say)
Now, he is dead
Today, finally unable to take the itchy load, I stripped myself bare
Of the gift, the memory, along with the guilt
That by so doing I might have committed an act of betrayal
I said to my wife:
I'm going to dump this itchy shirt
I'm not even going to give it away to the Australian poor
For philanthropy
China-made, it should be Chinese-trashed
Good idea, she said
After putting on a different shirt, I remembered
Once again for the hundredth time
That Ming was tortured to death in a Chinese prison
On 20 August 2003
Because of his Falungong belief