Gui Jie, Beijing

I’ll wait for you on Ghost Street, beneath the paper light
of ten thousand lanterns.

I’ll wait for you on Ghost Street, where crayfish sizzle
upon the coals.

I’ll wait for you on Ghost Street, where carp skulk
in the silt of forgotten tanks.

I’ll wait for you on Ghost Street, where the guitar boys
serenade empty rooms, bare tables, upended chairs.

*

Don’t be taken in by the waitress at the Russian joint,
between her legs there is only despair.

Look for the hawker who has lost her teeth,
who has sold her hair in a braided knot.

Look for the hanging sloth of a just-skinned dog,
all purple tissue and silver sinew.

Look for the boy with the copper eyes, sucking bone marrow
through a yellow straw.

*

Wait for me on Ghost Street, where old bicycles
slough their rusted bones.

Wait for me on Ghost Street, where the doormen sing
in their quilted coats.

Wait for me on Ghost Street, find a fire pit
to warm your hands.

Wait for me on Ghost Street, beneath the paper light,
the red-lit night.

first published in PN Review 210 

 

La Santa, Lanzarote

My sister slips into the sea of a quiet dawn,
pulls her body up the coast, until only faint splashes
and the ruffled commotion of rising gulls
identify her stroke, silver in the sun.

In the morning mist, Tinajo’s houses
are blurred like snow or ash on the foothills
of the volcano. The birds resettle
on the water, preening away their affront.

Workmen make the most of morning,
of the sun’s easy early light,
trading small talk with one another,
and soft low laughter; and the short sound –

of the nail gun with the opposite shore.
A man stalks into the lagoon, lunges
into the water, swims butterfly to the other side,
then lies, chest heaving, glistening

on the sand, content with his short effort.
When she returns, her silver splashes cast up
another white flutter from the surface:
wings beating the sun’s rays

into flashes of light, brighter than dawn,
she emerges from the sea, breathing easily,
smiling wide, as if she has just swum, then stalked,
from her own world, into another.

first published in Poetry Review, Spring 2010