The waves
smash the sand to gritty atoms,
strike like a jealous husband,
yet the lone man stands with eyes like rivet ends
ashy hair salt plastered to his skull.
Divining headphones
tag with ping & hum
the bottle cap tramped into silt
by antique instep or the salt-encrusted tooth
rasped from an errant jaw tumbling
trough to leaden trough. Children jeer him but he's deaf
to what they sing, like some queer tufted heron
he darts and bends and harvests the murk
rocking beneath the mirrors at his grointo grope the blowsy sea, rejecting
whorls and gemmy horns. (A span of pearls
slaps his cheek). As boys scream home with wet towels
knotted at their throats, he scoops his homely treasure from the cold
and tucks the tortured gewgaw in a bag.
Then circles in his wildness once again.
Printed on rough paper pressed from poorest beggar's
rags, the spit sucked from
rotten teeth, fresh sawdust of
coffin boards pegged together on trestles
in damp rooms whose uncemented bricks
fall in escarpments of clay --A splash of gold
& red Chinese (piston-like compression of idea
recoils in meaning Long Life) stacked
in still moist ideograms
scumbled with blue bottle wings
will tumble when litdown to the perpetually outstretched palms
of ancestors whose karmas
have locked them
within the bronze-gated steadfastnesses of death --where glittering ash smudged on thumb-fat
of a horse-faced demon
barring the way to rebirthmay effect the grand pay-off many yet living
gap-toothed & leather-eyed scions
dream of daily in their noon-time hunker:those who have only the twisted
sinews in neck & arm for inheritance --
the dislocated shoulder, spine knuckled
with arthritis -- those
stripped of every comfort & handed a hoe
by the People's Government --pray for a future Cadillac in flames
easing effortlessly
past toll booths --in the back seat a tower of oranges
in the glove box cakes of raman noodles
on the floor a carton of cold Pepsi-Colasand ahead a Mao-jacketed Deity
waving them through the lines
of those who -- even in death -- wait
without voice, wait
with empty hands.
All day she squats
behind her tin basinMarl eyes & face
hacked from cord woodThe shift she wears
barely hides leather papsAnkles chased with dirt
filigreed with scabs
thicken into toesSunk into human mud
A fly ticks & stops
& tocks along her browAs before her
thicker than her wristgray eel swells
inches of waterDragging reflected sky into its belly
& Bulging sky out
from gills
neat as razor cutsBuy her misery
for one black market Mao& Lift it, twisting in your arms
wrapped in a filthy sack
jaws snagged in the weftFor one Mao more
she will teach it patience
with a stoneshe says --
Easier for you to eat.
Dog skulls, monkey ribs, bear paws
smoke with flies. Caked cords
of desiccated flesh, leaf-flecked,
dense as winter marl
laid out on muddy quilts
by a bicycle-mad street
where the Mao Jackets hawked
& spat & cleared their septic throats
under a sky threatening rain
& dun-turbaned Northerners
with braided beards
& "not to be trusted" (translator
whispered) rehearsed
to noon loafers
the wonders of the Tao,
dragon bones, lion teeth cures.Dressed in robes
the color of butcher wrap, one
pats his lower back
& mimes a cup of charnel teadowned in a gasp. Another grabs
his thing & laughs! Good health! Pee free!
He sings the price in black market Mao,
then artlessly explores one nostril
with a subtle thumb.One clacks two metal bars
to draw a crowd:
blue pigeons scatter in the factory yard
as housewives wonder.He motions me near...
I shake my head.
The loafers grin derision.
All smirk the tongueless foreigner away
& at once begin to dicker for the dead..