Xie - Eye level poems

JENNY XIE Graywolf Press Copyright 2018 by Jenny Xie The author and Graywolf Press have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only.

You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the authors copyright, please notify Graywolf Press at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy. This publication is made possible, in part, by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, and a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation. Significant support has also been provided by Target, the McKnight Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the Amazon Literary Partnership, and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. Published by Graywolf Press 250 Third Avenue North, Suite 600 Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401 All rights reserved. www.graywolfpress.org Published in the United States of America ISBN 978-1-55597-802-0 Ebook ISBN 978-1-55597-992-8 2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1 First Graywolf Printing, 2018 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017938013 Cover design: Jeenee Lee Design

For my family The eye you see is not an eye because you see it; it is an eye because it sees you. Antonio Machado Between Hanoi and Sapa there are clean slabs of rice fields and no two brick houses in a row. I mean, no three See, countings hard in half-sleep, and the rain pulls a sheet over the sugar palms and their untroubled leaves. Hours ago, I crossed a motorbike with a hog strapped to its seat, the size of a date pit from a distance. Can this solitude be rootless, unhooked from the ground? No matter. The mind resides both inside and out.

It can think itself and think itself into existence. I sponge off the eyes, no worse for wear. My frugal mouth spends the only foreign words it owns. At present, on this sleeper train, theres nowhere to arrive. Me? Im just here in my travelers clothes, trying on each passing town for size.

when the natives see you, the tourist, they envy you, they envy your ability to leave your own banality and boredom Jamaica Kincaid The ease with which a place becomes an entry: searchlight viewfinder fantasys aperture Smell of my lateral gazing Reach of the outsiders extravagant need While I listened for the dialects While I hunted down the night markets chewed lips Authentic encounters executed just so Extractions of color and details in the needed size Beauty kept simple and numbness hot The contrast and the rot in the air are merciful August, chambered.

City of a million young faces. A woman perches sidesaddle on a motorbike. Another clutches stiff bread and leeks. And how combed through, this rain! The riled heat reaches the river shoal before it reaches the dark. Theres new money lapping at these streets. Thirsts planted beneath the shells of high-rises.

Norodom Boulevard, flanked by stale bulbs, lets through a motorcade. In the backseat of a gold Lexus a ministers son lies, his eyes shut dumb with honeyed sleep. Fixtures: slack lips of suitcases, lukewarm showers up to three times in a day. Mosquito bites on the arms and thighs, patterned like pips on dice. An hour before midnight, the corners of the city begin to peel. Alley of sex workers, tinny folk songs pushed through speakers.

Karaoke bars bracketed by vendors hawking salted crickets. How do eyes and ears keep pace? The zippered notes of bike engines enter through an opening in my sleep. My dreams sputtering out because of this. Its useless to describe the slurry of humidity or the joy of a fistful of rice cradled in curry, but its not that Im at a loss for words. Every day I drink Coca-Cola and write ad copy. Im in the business of multiplying needs.

Today, its whitening face lotion, whitening foam wash, whitening sunscreen. Across the seas, the copy can only read brightening. But here, things blanch. Desire makes beggars out of each and every one of us. Cavity that cannot close. That cracks open more distances.

A man whose outline I know dives into a rooftop pool. Rips a body-sized hole into it. Wanting falls around me. Heavy garment. After clocking out, a group of telecom managers tear into durians. And now that the daylight turns viscous, a new wife buckles limbs with a foreign lover at the Himawari Hotel.

Someone sweeps thick cockroaches from the floor, someone orders oysters on ice. Even the rain sweats, unkempt like the rest of us. I enter Wat Langka to sit. To still the breath. A steadying out and in, out and in. Still, here in this country, something I cant ever enter.

On the screen: glow of missives. Friends with pressed collars riding elevators. They pass on left lanes, laboring in the din of American cities. The stock market will dive spectacularly, but no one yet knows this. Im still where I am, in conditions of low visibility. Why not wait until Ive waited why out? The irony of the White Building is lost on no one.

Its a face repeatedly emptied by a fist. It hangs on by dirtied rag, by pure stubbornness. Ive lived across from it, walked past neighbors gambling on Nokia phones held together by elastic bands and grandmothers fanning coals to smoke fish. For my own apartment, I paid too much. In the kitchen, I catch myself in a pan of water, but there I am transparent. You could say moving here was a kind of hiding.

The compass needle points to where nothing begins. I ride the cheapest forms of transportation, my sight carries me just as far. Yes, Im tired of laundry soured by mildew. This lonesomeness turning over when it smells my approach. Rainwater mars the tin roofs, melts a sticky bun left in the alley. It worries down the final tips of daylight.

How long will it be like this? Water growing out of water. The tourists curate vacation stories, days summed up in a few lines. Killing Fields tour, Sambo the elephant in clotted street traffic, dusky-complexioned children hesitant in their approach. How the viewfinder slices the horizon Their pleasure is shrill, I agree. It knows little of how banality accrues with no visible evidence.