by Mark Danowsky
Communist Party cadres have filled meeting halls around China to hear a somber, secretive warning issued by senior leaders. Power could escape their grip, they have been told, unless the party eradicates seven subversive currents coursing through Chinese society. These seven perils were enumerated in a memo, referred to as Document No. 9, that bears the unmistakable imprimatur of Xi Jinping, China’s new top leader. The first was “Western constitutional democracy”; others included promoting “universal values” of human rights, Western-inspired notions of media independence and civic participation, ardently pro-market “neo-liberalism,” and “nihilist” criticisms of the party’s traumatic past. --Chris Buckley, NY Times, August 19, 2013
We know all about Document No. 9
number nine, number nine
details of seven deadly sins
who’s to know
about human rights
whatever you’re doing
the media has it wrong
but you know it isn’t
the unseen hand knocking
maybe it’s nothing
more than the past
Mark Danowsky’s poetry has recently appeared in Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Red River Review, Right Hand Pointing, Snow Monkey and The Best of Every Day Poets Anthology Two. He resides in Northwest Philadelphia and works for a private detective agency.