The BlueIris Semi-Nightly Poetry Break, 4/30/08

[BlueIris]

"Saigon Bar Girls, 1975"

You're among them
            washing off makeup
& slipping into peasant clothes
     the color of soil.
          Chu nom lotus
rooting in singing blood,
    I know your story
        molded from ashes
        into a balled fist
              hidden in raw silk.
You're on Tu Do Street
     with whores.  Unmirrored,
                  they sigh & forget
        their lists of Mikes,
                                        Bills, Joes, & Johns,
     as they shed their miniskirts
         thinner than memories
denied, letting them fall
               into a hush
            at their feet—
        French perfume
pale as history, reverie
       of cloth like smoke rings
    blown at an electric fan.

Ho Xuan Huong,
        you now can speak.
     Those Top 40 hits
have been given to a gale
          moving out to sea,
                  no match 
for your voice shiny as a knife
against bamboo shoots.
    Bar girls give you
their hard-earned stories
    & you pay them
    with green shadows
dancing nude around egrets
in paddies where lovers died.
                  They stand like Lot's wife
          at plaintive windows
        or return to home villages
            as sleepwalkers, leaving
sloe gin glasses
kissed with lipstick.

—Yusef Komunyakaa

[BlueIris]

1. Kick.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. My dear BlueIris!

I hate it when I miss your poems...

Had to do a simple search to find you today, sweetie...

And this poem?

It's a tough one!

Very sad...

But still, I like the imagery, the way the words play out on the page...

Thank you...

:hug:

[BlueIris]

3. Yeah, I was away from the computer for a while today, so I couldn't kick it.

Thanks for reading, my beloved C-Peg.

[BlueIris]

4. Kick.