I’m
in a Starbucks
in a supermarket
in a six-story mall
in Bangkok
alone
watching watchers
watch
a professional fruit basket maker
careful
labora balance
mangosteen canopy
in bundled electricity concentration
rambutan:
all red rind ball and yellowing ray
the sun’s son
a material day
fraying like we
flaming white heat in center sweet
to:
the woman
in gator pumps
jostling with the man
in silk suit
no pleasantries, no eye contact, a throwback dance
from
ages past that is still
in the code
inus
short steps and shoulder shrugs. She’s won.
A tall old foreigner looms behind them
crammed in a black shirt to flaunt
fat rolls for muscle
shakes his head in disgust
lowers levels from his height
to the Thai wife a third his age
tells her he has and could get better for cheaper.
Never.
I was lucky to sink into a chair here.
All spaces are filled with rolls
of durian paste.
There, a man reads the Bangkok Post.
There, a waxy American apple.
There, four blonde kids with Thai nanny.
There, waxy Argentinian blueberries.
There three college co-eds in tight white tops
and short black skirts bat their eyes in
handheld mirrors, elbows on a tableful of textbooks.
There, waxy Peruvian plums.
There, a waxy woman, stitched, fresh
from
surgery.
Wounded on lips and nose and in.
There, waxy South African grapes
top each basket, then plastic
covers the whole thing, then a hair dryer
melts the plastic to keep everything from
falling out and in its place.
None of us holding our
burnt Costa Rican coffee sees the from in
these impossible Burmese rattan baskets
or in each other.
Here I’ve judged
in laptop from California with parts from
Taiwan and China
those closest.
Complained of complainers even though
everything closed has a door outside—
the basket, the apple, us people.
Believe that.
And outside our outsides a male magpie-robin
from Asia or Africa or other bird from anywhere dances
all the same.
Driven from something in
them to puff their feathers, strut for mate, take
a gecko then bathe in the rainwater collected on a tree’s leaves.
From there it watches watchers watching
the clouds.
Migrant workers in
dried bamboo huts in
still postcard mountains in
rainy season
know the fruits are best
to pick when the humid air hums with the ripe
husking of mosquito wings cutting sky,
know the rainy season is the sweetest season,
is malaria season, is when the fullest baskets
may weigh heavy with the cruelest emptiness.
It’s often this way.
The poor going to war for our
sweet wants
masked as needs.
One storm stops job
to be done.
Two storm from store impatient
without forming story.
Three, let there not be.
We’re all staring
at baskets and seeing nothing.
Density Slant
For Dhaka, Bangladesh
(1)
On these rusted roads
are so many people
there are no people,
only one watered wave
of rolling rickshaw
and feet b-boppin’
and rickshaw
and pulse beating birdwing
and colors, so many colors
dulled in the dust of the drum.
(2)
They find ways
to find no way
out, she says.
The rusted red rake
must dig
before it drags.
Easier to muscle a moment
than to move
or make memory.
The must dig
drags before
the rake rusts red.
Tough seeds more
or less bitter
than fear’s juice.
The before drags
the must rake
digs red rust.
Easier to ask
the fraud
to bless the crowned
crane, and, when arrow
is airborne,
beg forgiveness again.
The red drags
must dig the rake
before the rust.
A poet works
when looking out
windowpanes—
So, tell me, how
many windows
are here? she says.
Four more gone. Thought:
Has death become an excuse
for celebration?
Infinite prophylaxis will
feed all
who swallow.
The dig before
the rake rusts
must drag red.
Easier to praise
haves who give
than plead needy.
Easier to burn sketches
of secretary birds,
pray it stomps the snake
that killed. Easier
to gift the gone
than give the living.
Five down. Thought:
Has death become an excuse
for art?
Before the red
the rust rake
must drag digs.
Six. Thought:
Has death become an excuse
for business?
Seven. Christ-o-mighty.
Death has become an excuse
for life.
Dense pulses all will
still. Culture can culture
when it’s killed.
Cameron Conaway is the 2014 Emerging Writer-in-Residence at Penn State Altoona. He is the author of Caged: Memoirs of a Cage-Fighting Poet (Threed Press), Until You Make the Shore (Salmon Poetry), Bonemeal (Finishing Line Press) and Malaria, Poems(forthcoming from Michigan State University Press). His work has appeared in Rattle, Juxtaposition, FictionWeek and Ottawa Arts Review.
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