- SALTY WET
Beware of salty wet men my mother says so my best defense is a ballpoint pen
hidden in my sweater sleeve, against my wrist, held between my fingers ready
to punch or stab an eye if I have to. I get off the bus and the green lost it
self in translation, leaving apartment buildings clustered like alabaster crowded
in a museum. Keep to yourself, walk in broad daylight, don’t be a mouse
if you have committed no crime, you have nothing to be afraid of at all….until he
waits for me in the corner under the dark skirt of the apartment building, pants
unzipped, ready to lunge at me. It’s your bad luck, and the forehead on your
fucking face, you pervert magnet, you! mother says, so I run without running.
I zip past his unzipped pants —his penis carelessly flapping like a dead lily in
the wind —without a word, I walk past the garden with all the flowers that could
have been, the ten dollars for eight panties store, telling myself not to look back
or panic because he is erect and ready to press his face against me to do
you know what, then it will be my bad luck mother says so I enter
the slippery red mouth of the wet market, passing the toothy fruit
stands and paint myself among the people mountaining and oceaning
around the butcher shop where a skinned pig hangs in silence.
