Driving Eye
Bangkok
Caught in a slip of particulars,
say, between the dirt road
and the brand-new
Seven-Eleven, a bucket
of lotus, three shades of red
in the mudbank giving way to
workers, faces hidden
behind kerchiefs, binding
the copper tines of another
half-constructed building,
this fretwork, that rooftop’s
progress up and up, the eye riding
a motor’s rev, coming to
a woman who leans
over the seventh story’s edge
for the pulley rope’s
basket of rice or rubber mallets,
then a sweep down into
cattle now, their beige skin
over bones, the look of loose tents,
or taking in a bronze
Buddha, hands folded over the First
National Melting Company,
the red gate, black gate,
red, retina arriving
at a man throwing straw
clumps to earth so the seeds
don’t wash away,
and the light behind him washing
away,
and this desire, a gaze
shot along the border which is
shaped like a question mark,
cramped with hotels, pink neon
grammars blinking
Alpha, Alpha, Alpha Is
The Bank For You And Your
Needs, another quick catch,
the glance stippled
with disappearances,
a girl who lifts her skirt
to bathe near the bus stop,
a fire
burning/burnt/burning
in the field of bulldozers,
an eye trying to fix itself
as the vehicle turns,
the mind from
nascent to nation,
drifting in instances, a grit
in wind worrying
the surface, the facts,
out to finger the invisible
gap we would inhabit, pulsing always
in between.
Copyright Credit: Pimone Triplett, "Driving Eye" from Ruining the Picture. Copyright © 1998 by Pimone Triplett. Reprinted by permission of TriQuarterly Books.
Source: Ruining the Picture (TriQuarterly Books, 1998)