Two Poems (May-ish, 2011. Issue 28.)
Visitors
When my sister takes my hand, I follow
along the curb of the littered sidewalk, jump
whenever the concrete breaks for pavement.
We dodge the shifting shadows of curious customers
who crash into crowded shops. Why would we go inside
when we trust shopkeepers must keep their custom
of selling porcelain ashtrays shaped like California,
plastic snow globes that storm winter weather
over the same sun-soaked Bay we visited yesterday.
Chinatown is always Chinatown, no matter what
town we have found ourselves in. No matter how many
years and miles have worked their way between us.
This time, only we seem different—
tourists of our own home, the new home,
a home made apart from any familiar place.
To cross the sidewalk, we leap from stripe to stripe.
Children again, with no place to go.
Consignment Shop
My, how your slow eyes chalked up
my body, and how deliberate your fingers
pulled down the zipper of my fine dress.
Each day is either—either or with you. Tell me again,
which day is the one that you last missed me.
Think: to miss someone who lives just downtown.
Maybe I have acted, tried to become the better actor,
just to prove all the fantastic ways I could change into you,
prove you, a worn costume I could remove should I choose.
Maybe it is true, but if you are, won't you call me
a masochist, too? They already do. At least I have not
been selfish: I should be proud to play selflessly you,
would act small every day if acting smaller were acting
you. Play me: return me to that moth-balled shop.
Find yourself a perfect pair. How could I not mind
if another shiny girl found you here. You, treasure,
now priced at half what I cost. Tell me, which one
of them did you own before, could you own later.
Who else do you own now? Sure, sell me out: buy me back.
Go on and loan me. I cannot be bargained for. |