Walking at high noon
Down the city street to Saigon Sandwich
The Mexican crack dealer barks at a chump
Who wants a five-dollar piece on Jones Street
A prostitute pulls down her skirt
To hide a bruise that the sun reveals
For every demon here there is a place of worship open:
Vietnamese; Cambodian; Pakistani; or Indonesian
No fog today and the sun is weighing it all out
You ask me what's new in an email:
I lost sleep when the clock stole an hour
while the spring morning became
darker and earlier than the day before.
The local poets are recording the season with haiku.
Wine, ganja and pornography now bore me.
My thoughts float northeast to you,
like the coastal fog, mysteriously disappearing.
What are you an angry young novelist?
with the door always slamming and such shit!
That, must be the conflict.
Jonathan Hayes lives in San Francisco, California where he edits and publishes the long-running American small press journal, Over the Transom. His poetic travelogue, Nippon: Drinking Sake and Staring at Fireflies in the August of Cicadas, will be released online this year by Silenced Press, Ohio.
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