What we are up to

Street Fighter Sonnets #5

27/02/09
by Nick Holloway

All this week Ross Sutherland has been sharing sonnets he's written inspired by the Street Fighter universe. Today is the cinema release of Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, so it’s only appropriate that we finish with her. Over to Ross...


Seemingly weightless INTERPOL agent Chun-Li has joined the tournament in order to collect on a blood-debt. Her father, also an INTERPOL agent, had spent many years tracking an international smuggling operation known as the Shadaloo.


When Dad turns up sans-head, Chun-Li vows to avenge his death. Discovering a link between the Shadaloo and the Street Fighter tournament, she throws herself into training for the event.


CHUN-LI (CHINA, weight unknown)


New for the file: one hundred kilograms

of methamphetamine seized in transit

from Guangzhou. Seven Cambodians,

slit ear to ear. A paper trail, too scenic

to safely tread. Yet she knows the climb:

Her father had followed it once. His head,

once fished-out, was added to the file.

INTERPOL, like his partitioned ghost, had

no strength to exact revenge. She grips

the rings, levitating, the crash mat

hairs below her head. Only through weightlessness,

she thinks, can I ascend this narrow path,

this mangled tomb of half-lies. My name will

never be stapled into these black pages.



Wow, what a serious buzzkill end to the series. I couldn’t help it. I could only write it in half-rhymes too, Chun-Li is that serious a character. She’s also the first playable female character in video game history. I won’t degrade her by talking about the fact that you can see her pants when she flips upside down. She’s the Emily Pankhurst of SNES, for God sake. You want light relief, make a film about Blanka. I’ll happily write you some limericks about a green somersaulting dog. That stuff writes itself.

Previous sonnets: RYU | DHALSIM | E. HONDA | ZANGIEF


COMMENTS

  1. i really like these very mooch ross, but i wondered, did you write one for Sagat?
    he was my favourite, and i kind of fancied him.
    anyway, does he have a poem?

    Also, did you buy street fighter 3 for the xbox when it came out? And if so, did you feel a little bit annoyed that you had to suffer the loss of so many great original characters in favour of a strange new line up of fighters? with their wierd hair and stupid arms?

    Was it hard for you to love them, but you tried your best anyway?
    Did you slightly hate all their dumb new moves?

    Does the fact that those 'new' SF3 characters have now been SCRAPPED in the 'return to form' SF4, which re-introduces all our original first-love fighters leave you feeling mildly pissed off but essentially relieved and stillll ahhh upset?!

    well. this is how i feel.
    anyway.

    want to hear my poem?

    roses are red,
    violets are blue,
    if you be e.honda,
    then i'll be ryu

    from Line & a Dot x
    (do SAGAT please.)