USA

erg5h@cms.mail.virginia.edu

Bangkok, First day

1

100 off the plane.
Humid jet-fuel fumes
mingle with the jasmine lei
the Education Ministry staffer
eases around my neck.
In the distance
a mountain rises:
sapphire smog.

2

We drink quart beers at noon
in the outdoor market. Bright
blue tabletops. Tarps block
the white hot sun among whiffs
of charcoal and sweet coconut curry.
In the cool shadows of an overpass,
Pepsi crates totter on ice chunks
hidden under rags and sawdust.
Flames leap from a nearby wok.
The cook smiles: "Pak Fay, green
vegetables of fire. Eat them and cry."

3

On a blanket by the sidewalk,
people passing, a man's calloused toes
grip bamboo strands, thread them
through a round frame. His arm stumps
twitch above his lifting
calves and flexing knees. Beside him,
a stack of baskets grows on the cement.

4

At the temple, pineapple wedges
stacked crosswise gleam
on the vendor's cart, sliced
sunshine, brilliant
as the gold leaf peeling
from Buddha's face.

5

The exhaust-filled surges
of taxis, busses, trucks
thunder by the child
islanded in the intersection.
The twilight sun thickens
the air around him. He sells
jasmine flowers, holds them
dangling high over his head
as if saving them from a flood.

6

In a restaurant we order "soup."
Knotty viscera, tough gray rings,
and burgundy blood cubes
gleam in steamy broth.
"Come on," Ed laughs.
"Eat your entrails."

7

In the Mississippi
Queen on Patpong Road, her hands
rub my back, silky snakes
up and down my spine.
Swaying on platforms, girls
dance in bikinis, hypnotic
in swirls of incense and bar smoke.
I watch her oval sienna face
in the mirror's steamboat glitter,
eclipsed by naked legs. She whispers,
in my ear, "I do anything
for you. Try me."

8

"No one sleeps till dawn,"
we all say, walking, 4 am.
In a market gearing up
for morning, bloody eyes.
A just-slaughtered
buffalo's skull watches us
from behind the red mound
of its butchered flesh.

9

A sucking "woof," like a snuffed
candle flame against
my ear, the stone
clatters into metal
shop gates. "Farang! Foreigner!"
floats in from wherever
my fear is. We turn,
and six trishaw drivers lounge,
feet up on handlebars,
across the street.

Bangkok Roundabout

Movie billboards blot out a six-story building.
"This Week": a bare-chested man kung-fu kicks
on a flaming yellow background, leaps over
tiny scampering armies while cities burn.
"Coming Soon": a prisoner, handcuffed in blue rags,
towers sadly over the sidewalk. In painted insets,
a judge ponders scales, a woman fingers a gun.

Below, where the scaffold-poles rise from grass,
families live. A mother shifts a steaming pot
on a charcoal brazier. Her boy chases chickens.
Their laundry hangs under the burning cities
and the huge feet of the prisoner.

(originally appeared in PIGEON CREEK)

Friday For the River

After work, you bring a yellow envelope
stuffed with tips from The Wheel Cafe.
My check from St. Francis Hospital
bears the saint's image, arms raised in prayer.
This week we had two on suicide watch,
and a schizophrenic wrote his name in shit
on the quiet room wall. We stroll into the cold,
windless evening. It's Friday, an illusion
of completeness upon us. Walking twilit streets
to the river, we pass people jostling home
or cramming into happy hours. Lights switch on
along the wharf, and the sky's muted blue
corona fades behind Coal Hill.

The river gives back everything
the sky sends down. The bridge arcs into
its reflection, a perfect ellipse of girders.
The hill carries its dark complement, houses
clinging to its underbelly. Along West End,
the lamps set down spikes of light
that shiver in the gloom of the river bend,
the water surface invisible. You lean
against me, your eyes luminous
as the blue water. We look over the levee,
down into a stillness that contains us,
a stillness where a red full moon rises
into the depths of the Allegheny.

© All Copyright, 2000, Peter Blair.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.