The tiny man from the print shop stretches
as top far left as his chicken fingers claw.
He is taping streamers of brown plastic,
a road map on the big window,
fretting to news as a hurricane brews,
winding warm water in the far Caribbean.
Two Thai ladies next door have no clue.
Hidden from the sun, their dark pit needs
pink neon to complete the look of sleaze,
but theirs-- is just a barbershop, snip slop,
without clientele. Oh well. They paint
nails instead, talk their secret language
without anguish to Spanish on a small TV.
The next store is empty; the soul has left
along with cigars, pretty boxes
and hard-faced smokers spitting their tar.
It's a fish tank that has never seen water.
It's torn plastic, spent bar codes, grime.
Thus a tut, tut, tut from a pacing man,
that man from Mumbai who wanders
the stone arches wondering why,
when anything you could ever need
costs the skin of one buck, except his wife
behind the counter of his dollar store.
Her dowry, her twisted saris and financial
worries will echo through all of his life
until he's dead, dead, dead, then they may
drag him next door, where for all but the poor
the bury men will peel to a naked state,
plane the skin like carpenters, recommend
oak over pine with free silica gel,
a twenty-dollar value at this season's end.
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