Bob Lucky: A Walk Before Dawn

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flattened frog the silence of early morning

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every five years

every cell in our bodies is replaced

you don’t need to know that

to know the love we made last night

is not the love we made a decade ago

is not the love we found that night

at the end of monsoon on a rooftop in Delhi

the macaques chattering in the trees

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battered suitcase

the smoothness

of a worn handle

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every journey recalled is retaken
reassembled memories of the shrine
to the stillborn and aborted
make room in my heart for this
frog flat and sundried as leather

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caught between a tire and the pavement

in the disappearing act of life

I take it by a leg and make it hop

like a shadow puppet across the sky

then toss it into the weeds

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sunrise

the darkness fades

into birdsong

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by Bob Lucky

Hangzhou, China

Bob Lucky: Night Market

The Ningxia Street night market is a jumble of hawkers and customers, the hum of propane burners, the clack-clack of spatulas in woks, and a thousand conversations.

legs dangling
from a plastic stool
a little girl
concentrates on her skewer
of candied tomatoes

Making our way through the crowd, we buy various types of flatbreads, oyster mushrooms breaded and deep-fried, kebabs and sausages.

on the altar
of a local shrine
an egg tart—
at last a god
to my liking

by Bob Lucky
Hangzhou, China

Bob Lucky: The Shuffling Blues

This morning I roll out of bed with sore hips and limp to the toilet. Surely I’m not as old as I feel, though a glance in the mirror is inconclusive.

the older I get
the weaker my sense
of immortality—
the heart carved in the trunk
stretched to the bursting point

No pension to speak of, no money sense, no hope of a hefty inheritance—I will die in harness like an old workhorse. To my wife, I’ll leave a mixed bag of memories; to my son, shoes that I pray do not fit.

by Bob Lucky
Hangzhou, China

Bob Lucky: Missing

“Neil!” she yells from the center of the playground, “Neil!” It’s late afternoon, almost dusk, the swing sets and slides are deserted, all the children home for dinner except this one, Sadie, searching for her brother. “Neil!” she calls out one more time, scanning the playground. “He disappears everywhere,” she explains.

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deepening shadows a small hand of green bananas

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by Bob Lucky
Hangzhou, China

Bob Lucky: On a Journey

door open door closed no door wherever I am says Kabir an entry point but I can’t get a handle on it turning this way turning that until turning becomes a circle the circle a trap the trap a door always open always closed

broken clouds
my head against
the bus window

by Bob Lucky
Hangzhou, China

Bob Lucky: Bake Sale

The campus is thick with mothers and nannies laden with cupcakes, chocolate chip cookies and cinnamon rolls. Across the quad a woman sees me sitting on a bench, with my hands beneath my legs to keep them warm. She slows her pace, stops, then turns and heads towards me. We make eye contact when she is about thirty feet away. I watch the look of recognition dissolve as she gets closer.

“Oh, it’s not you.”

“But it is,” I reply.
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an awkward silence
leaves change color
and blow away
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by Bob Lucky
Hangzhou, China

Bob Lucky: SHIRAZ

I haven’t had a drink in five years, well, not more than a glass here and there, not since my brother died of a cocaine overdose, but I have to say, to say that this bottle, this Shiraz, this is no doubt, doubtlessly the best bottle of wine or whatever I’ve had in a long time.
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two weeks of rain
the faces in the mold
on the café wall

by Bob Lucky
Hangzhou, China

Bob Lucky: DR. LIVINGSTON, YOU PRESUME

I went to see my Chinese doctor this morning and wanted to say “Dr. Livingston, I presume,” but I bit my tongue, so to speak, and didn’t say anything but “Good morning” because, well, first of all, that’s probably the joke he is most sick of since that is his name, though he’s a physician and should be able to heal himself, and second, though it’s not related, is that he’s not Chinese but American, he just practices Chinese medicine, and that’s quite an accomplishment because if I’m not mistaken, and I have been before, he is the only non-Chinese doctor in China allowed or registered or certified or whatever it is they do here to practice Chinese medicine.

chilly morning
the blind erhu player
warms up

I am wishing my wife were here because she knows everything that is wrong with me, like the sneezing I always forget to mention, as Dr. Livingston and I gossip a bit about mutual acquaintances and he gets down to business taking my pulse and checking out my tongue and asking questions about my digestion and appetite and cough and have I been following his dietary recommendations, and I tell him that China makes me sick, and he laughs because we both know the air is horrible and we might as well take up a three-pack a day habit, and I’ve been coughing for two years, which he already knows, but my appetite is good and every time I eat fried food I think of what he’s told me, and then I remember a recent foot massage I had and tell him about how the masseuse looked at my big toe on my left foot and said I wasn’t sleeping well, and he just gives me this funny smile and says, “They always say that or something about your digestion.”

overcast skies
artificial sunflowers
turned to the window

Tapping his fingers lightly on the table and furrowing his brow, he gets very serious as he writes out a prescription for a Chinese herbal tea to help correct my damp heat stagnation, which he diagnosed partly by pushing all around my abdomen until he found out where it hurt, and to be honest I have no idea what damp heat stagnation is but I trust this man, for he is my doctor after all, and he’s kind, and most amazingly to me, he can write and speak Chinese like a native, and yes, as I said, I’m amazed but also jealous because Chinese has proven to be a completely foreign language to me, maybe because my brain is too filled with bits and pieces of other languages, of Hindi and Spanish mostly, but oddly what comes out of my mouth most often and inadvertently since living in China is Japanese, which I suppose the Chinese wouldn’t like if they knew what I was saying, though I’m not really saying much.

year of the rat
erasing the crossword
year of the cow

When it is time to go, I really don’t want to go because I know the next stop is the Chinese herb shop where I will have to push old ladies and stooped men out the way just to get a free cup of tea to get the courage to stand in line to pay before I go to the counter and join the scrum to get my herbs bundled up into little packages, and then I’ll have to walk around for an hour or two or hang out in a café while they put it all together, which isn’t so bad in Hangzhou if the air is okay that day, and later I’ll push my way back to the front of the counter and take my herbs home and make tea, at least that’s what they call it, but it is really the most god-awful concoction you can imagine, no matter what combination of herbs you get or even if you throw in a bit of cardamom toward the end of the first boiling, and this brew takes two boilings to release all the terrible smelling elixirs that will rejuvenate you, but in the meantime, at least for the next two weeks, you feel like the wicked witch of the west hovering over her cauldron, and you may look just as green, and you can’t invite anyone over to your apartment during that time because the place smells so bad, as if the family pet has died and been left in a corner because no one has the heart to take it outside and say goodbye.

winter thaw
the sweet potato vendor
pokes his last tuber

by Bob Lucky
Hangzhou, China

Bob Lucky: PROUST NEVER ATE BUTTERMILK PIE

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.family reunion
pies lined up on the counter
to cool

I’ve spent half my life trying to explain buttermilk pie to those who haven’t had the pleasure. Once, living in Japan, I decided I would have to bake a pie to make my case for the superiority of buttermilk over all other pies. I served it to guests, Australians and Japanese, on Thanksgiving Day. It was almost too sweet to eat. The Japanese politely took a bite, hid their mouths behind their hands, nodded with ambiguous enthusiasm, and set their plates down with uncharacteristic decisiveness. The Australians were cheerfully blunt and expected to win the Noble Prize in medicine for identifying the main cause for obesity in Americans. Without much of a leg to stand on, a condition only partially to blame on the amount of wine drunk, I pointed an accusing finger at the quality of Japanese sugar.

Japanese New Year
choking on a piece
of green tea mochi

by Bob Lucky
Hangzhou, China

Bob Lucky: DESIGNED TO HOLD UP SUNLIGHT

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The Year of the Rat begins with severe winter storms pushing far into the south of China. In the middle of the night there’s a tremendous crash. Fireworks, we mumble and go back to sleep. Next morning, opening the curtains, we see bits of twisted blue sheet metal half buried in snow. The covered outdoor basketball court at which I often fantasized making a last-second game-winning three-point shot is rubble. Only designed to hold up sunlight, a passerby later explains.

another cold front
the tickets to Thailand
in the desk drawer

by Bob Lucky
Hangzhou, China
first published in Presence #35, May 2008

Bob Lucky: COMPANY IN CHIANG MAI, THAILAND

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Having company is a kind of travel. A friend from Japan is visiting. Tonight we plan to go down to the Ping River for the Loi Kratong festival. The river will be jammed with flickering candles adrift in their banana-leaf boats, the sky above lit with thousands of airborne lanterns: prayers and gratitude going up and going downstream. Yesterday we went to a khao soi restaurant I’ve been meaning to check out for months. Afterwards, at the market, we bought an assortment of crickets, grasshoppers and silkworms to nibble on as we strolled home.

tropical twilight…
the chicken griller
fans her coals.

by Bob Lucky
Hangzhou, China
first published in Frogpond 30.2, Summer 2007

Bob Lucky: A TWINGE OF PAIN WITH A HINT OF MELODRAMA

doctors and patients,
we’re all dying—
this afternoon
I’ve lain in bed thinking
of a world without us

the nurse shaves me
in places
not shorn before—
the expression on her face
neither awe nor derision

outside surgery
my wife’s face receding
upside-down—
having washed his hands
the surgeon won’t shake mine

I hear the anesthesiologist tell the surgeon that I should try to get from the gurney to the bed on my own. I must have done so, for there is a sense of relief in the room. My wife kisses me on the forehead, someone squeezes my right foot, and the surgeon puts a sand bag on my groin and tells me to keep it there for twenty-four hours. Outside my window the well-lit skyscrapers of Shanghai jab their lightning rods into a hazy sky.

the night is erased,
scratched out—
sleep
at thirty-minute intervals
someone asks me to pee

by Bob Lucky
Hangzhou, China

Bob Lucky: STITCHES

I have a friend write a note in Chinese explaining that eight days ago I had hernia surgery and the stitches need to be removed. Rather than go back to Shanghai, where I had the surgery, or trek an hour across town to the nearest hospital, I decide to check out a local health clinic.

sodden moonbeams
the smeared arc of dust
on the windshield

My wife and I pull up outside a clinic near a popular restaurant. I’m soon flat on my back behind a small partition, my shirt pulled up under my chin. There’s a video in English with Chinese subtitles about abortion playing on the other side, where two men on IV drips cough weakly and occasionally moan.

winter chill
the ping of stitches
in a metal pan

Within ten minutes, and for less than five dollars, I’m ready for dinner. The pharmacist, who also functions as nurse and cashier, laughs at my Chinese name and tells me to take it easy. The doctor waves goodbye with a pair of scissors.

the waiter’s gaze—
removing fish bones
with chopsticks

by Bob Lucky
Hangzhou, China

Bob Lucky: FASHION HISTORY

Packing for a trip to Thailand to celebrate my wife's 50th birthday, I come across my late brother's swimsuit. I've had it for almost five years and never worn it. I'm not sure if he ever did.

sitting
on the edge of the bed
wanting to cry—
happy my wife can sleep through
this unraveling of grief

There's a stack of student essays on my desk. Some examine the causes of the Seven Years' War; others explain Russia's isolation from Western Europe prior to 1700. Right now five years seems a lifetime ago.

holding
my late brother's swimsuit—
fashion history
trunks of elephants
point to a joke

If he were alive, he wouldn't be caught dead in this. I certainly won't be. Nevertheless, I roll it up and put it in my suitcase, planning to wrap it around a coconut and throw it into the sea.
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by Bob Lucky
Hangzhou, China

Bob Lucky: THE NEW UGLY AMERICANS

lift off—
the dash to business class
for empty seats

40,000 feet over Cambodia, heading home. One thing the flight crew neglected in going over safety procedures was how to latch the toilet door. I’ve seen enough flesh on this flight, and from some very unflattering angles, to induce pornographic nightmares.

squeezed
into tiny seats—
the high cost of fuel

In a few hours I’ll be in Hangzhou sitting in my local restaurant in the alley, cracking sunflower seeds between my teeth and spitting the shells on the table and floor with the rest of them.

loud belch
squabbling for the honor
to pick up the check

by Bob Lucky
Hangzhou, China

Bob Lucky: TIME WARP

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Over the weekends I park my car illegally near my apartment building and get up early Monday mornings to move it down the street to a legal spot. This morning I noticed scattered groups of dead ants, as if they had drowned and washed ashore on the pavement. It hadn’t rained the day before. I could think of no plausible explanation for this ant catastrophe. Then I noticed the playground across the street had sprouted with tan mushrooms that had long thin stems and caps that looked like those bamboo hats Vietnamese and Chinese farmers wear when working in the rice paddies. It hadn’t rained the day before. I could think of no plausible explanation for this mushroom explosion. The security guard guided me out of my illegal spot and I drove down the street, but there was no place to park. Every spot was occupied. Some cars were parked on the sidewalk. I drove around the block a few times before returning to my illegal spot and the security guard’s welcoming wave. It started to rain.

Sunday supper
the lunch I packed
for Monday

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by Bob Lucky

Hangzhou, China

Bob Lucky: SMALL JOURNEY MEDITATIONS

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stepping out walking home stepping out walking home
stepping out walking home stepping out walking home
stepping walking stepping walking stepping walking

home the smell of coffee in my mustache

by Bob Lucky
Hangzhou, China

Bob Lucky: A KIND OF NON-ATTACHMENT

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I follow her for three blocks trying to identify the flower tattooed on her calf, but for the first time in years the crosswalk lights are with me and she never stops.

cloudy afternoon
a lady bug leaves me
empty-handed

by Bob Lucky
Hangzhou, China

Bob Lucky: FINAL EXAMS

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It slipped by the proctors, an exam with no name on it. In the top right-hand corner, the line following the colon following NAME is free of any mark or sign. Like a team of forensic experts using process of elimination to identify a victim, they go through all of the examinations until a name is found to fill in the blank.

a blanket of smog
the muted voices
at recess

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by Bob Lucky

Hangzhou, China

Bob Lucky: IGNORING DYLAN THOMAS SOMETIMES, SOMETIMES NOT

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A hip and a shoulder on opposite sides are tightening up, giving me a sort of rolling gait. I stumble into the night splotchy-skinned, the hair on my arms thicker than on my head. Muscle is turning inexorably into flab, except for the heart, which is doubtless hardening with the arteries. My eyes grow dimmer every day, and yet when I see you sleeping there, a strand of hair across your face, the nightgown sliding off your shoulder, I want to hold on a little longer.

late autumn
toppling into a pile
of leaves –
the fragrance of earth
deep in my lungs

by Bob Lucky

Hangzhou, China