<B>James Jurado
RealPoetik had the pleasure of publishing James' work early
in OUR career (see the web page for 1994).
At the moment, he's producing the Flying Fish Poetry Show, Channel
34 MNN, hosting readings at the Knittings Factory and working on the
META4 website (meta4@octet.com).
ELEGY TO A CHINESE DELIVERY BOY
The wind bends the back of the rain
to pick up a penny.
Rice from open white boxes
scatters across the wet boulevard.
The rain fell hard,
mixing with the spilled Chinese vegetables.
The black soy sauce leaked all the way
to the curb and down the drain.
Your bicycle was turned
inside out
to make you a wheel chair.
Blindfolded,
we listen for birds.
Your body jerks in spasms
writing Chinese prayers
in the ink of your nerves,
oozing like black squid
from the depths, beneath
a terrifying white sheet.
You are face down in the gutter,
suffering where gasoline glows
into macadam shadows
of stained glass windows.
Near the curb, where a cat carved
an altar from the chest of a mouse,
a minister wearing a jellyfish for a tie,
stops to spit, uncontrollably.
On the black street
earthworms come out
to sing Methodist hymns
to your Buddhist hair.
The woman
who was walking her dog
comes over.
She wants to towel dry
your wet black hair.
The woman bends down to touch
the vanishing point of your neck's artery.
The kiss stops the bleeding
and the rain.
Black flies ascend into light,
lift up your stretcher, floating
into the ambulance.
Later, that kind woman
will stroke the cock of her dog
with your chopsticks.
BROCHURE BOY
Wu Tsao sits in a padlocked green railroad car,
where the cool air conditioner
moistens the insides of every window.
There are boxes of brochures
for traveling on Long Island.
Any good hunting areas nearby?
Wu Tsao shows them a bullet
with a killed deer inside,
perfectly preserved.
Brochure boy chews on white taffy
thinking about the shape of gravity.
He starts fidgeting with a potato,
studying its optics.
Which way to the vineyards
of Long Island?
Wu Tsao sits,
talking on a telephone,
letting the chord go between her legs,
while the cool air conditioner
moistens the insides of every window
like the inside of an envelope.
Brochure boy says
there are
brochures on shells,
and fishing,
antiques
and music
we even have a calender
on Long Island festivals,
and a listing
of horse trainers.
Brochure Boy opens his mouth wide
as if saying the letter, "O".
Do you have a map for the North Fork?
Wu Tsao sits in a padlocked green railroad car,
where the cool air conditioner
moistens the insides of every window.
like the inside of a reed for a clarinet.
Brochure boy pulls gravity
out of freshly mowed lawns,
at garage sales
where even turkeys
run loose, near peach farms.
Peach and potato farms.
Long Island's famous for that.
There is a large poster above the doorway
of brochure boy's office
The melancholy of "Shinicock canal"
is captured here.
I see it by the side of the L.I.E entrance
in the beadmaker's strands
and earrings display
and the $3 AM/FM pocket radio
for sale
at the open Hot Dog stand.
Above the tourist information desk,
there is a post card that proves
Wu Tsao is not afraid of river eels.
Memories of summer boys
going to shoot off rockets
light up the pines
like a Sunset.
Brochure boy retires for the day,
with flashlight moving
'gainst the corn,
looking at meteors falling
. into the long twilight.
And to the sound of a distant train whistle,
Wu Tsao dances
on the picnic table,
silhouetted 'gainst the stars--
her sensuous thighs uncovered
straddled over Brochure boy's head.
THE ISLAND OF A MIRROR
How sad is the written poem
that cannot see
its own reflection
in the mind of a reader.
I wish to write to you
but I cannot see the back of my head.
This poem leaves only
a tiny scar in thought,
something nostalgic
where nothing visible to the naked eye
approaches you from the East.
And I will write to you,
on that particular day,
with the rented hands of a blindman,
showing you the cave drawings
scripted in brailx
inside your mailbox.
SKELETON PICKS ON A VULTURE
BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD
Cherry blossoms
scatter in mid-air
like jazz
change
the lines of many
haiku
Gold trumpets march
outside the viewing parlor,
blow horns with waving handkerchefs
and bulging eyes.
The riffs
of pink petals
twirl like confetti
in parade.
The wind
is witness to
its own burial.
James Jurado