Women and Children for Sale

1

So young like silk heaven!
Light pulls my bamboo hard (aaahs and ooohs) for this sweet potato!
Forget her and the yellow shutters.
Bicycles swarm—
they’re coming

2

Broiled-fish-Asian landscape where mercenaries
first hoisted their grandiose operas,
tossed their nets out for
translucent shrimp!
Jet a marriage, carry her to bed,
calmly jaywalk
with confidence.

3

The domestic market:
he’s paying all before a thousand selected queens
saddled behind glass and stage. They’re wearing the tightest lace
& blue jeans.
Miss, this is something!
Obsession, a little job abroad.

4

They shake,
smoldering before gilded midnight.
They come, primed for EXPLOSION.
One applauds, frozen-faced
at Franz Bar in the Alamino. Her name Ka Rene.

5

Before we go any further,
let me tell you why I seek struggle:
a little noodle soup and
rice liquor,
the debris of a giant firecracker,



to plunge from a butterfly
of a boat on golden waters.

6

Good Mor-Ning,
North America!
Hell-O.
I boil the classics, roast with plum sauce and the fiercest ginger.
I eat Gone with the Wind.
Scarlet exists
in the Bay of Tonkin.
It was difficult to get a visa.

7

Demon faith carries a girl
over fields, over Red River—
pagodas in full smoke.
Altars never wonder.
Flower balloons arrive from the village, interspersed in small
powder loads. Eyes, alive!

8

If you go out early, good-looking!
The damp winds bear the image,
half a world away
arranged before children were beaten. We’re in the tropics,
above sea level, at the latitude of Calcutta,
Indochina. Bombs, farms, annexations.
The northern border flouts. They suggest that I
don’t need a translator.

9

Take the train across Cambodia, very rich people!

Good food,
baskets on strings,
bikinis front row,
mandarin robes,
blue bodhisattvas,
gold, more children.

I ask a young man,
Care how they look?
Looks chaotic, but paved over,
they’re gone without a trace.

10

Go away crackling of fried beef,
butchering of two dogs for the pot
of love.
Been bone-hungry three days, another waxes and
I can hardly move.
Private resistance
of the bloodstream.

11

An inscription on a drum:

water buffalo
and pig.
Dragon inside
wherever I go.

Spirits Hate to be Alone

In burned sugarcane fields, the night’s ghost
of a saccada farmer in his brimless
hat. Swing of a stale blade
against moonlight. I watch the dead.

They love long hours of blackout.
They love this snuffed out match
of a little city. To the dust that separates

stained lace. To the poor
thrum of humidity.

From the grotto of Saint Lorenzo,
his palm an offering of birds
turns a sky from its yellow.

On a Milo can, I hear my own mouth.
Suction on a sugar-apple—
soft, white, meat,
black, tough, seeds,
between teeth like marbles.

Uncle, light a Flor de Isabela.
In the moment of rising smoke:

crest of a mottled white horse,
the lope on Gimbal’s rocky sands,

a girl recognizes the intrusive
pervading like mustard’s thick oil.

It’s hunger too.
The way of salt & rain
eating tin.