After Hours in Chinatown
The spa was down an alleyway,
with
chipped green doors and frosted
glass.
The stylists took the Metro 6
and left their tools in jars of
bleach;
the real room was behind the
shop.
There women, small and tightly
coiffed,
went nude or draped in satin
robes
while steam poured out from
everything:
caves of drains, and trees of
showers
basins of lakes and spigot
streams.
That place was a country of its
own.
I left my clothes on a
lacquered bench.
The ladies peered from cornered
eyes
at spidered breasts and salmon
thighs.
They formed in flocks like
birds and
raised their brows in parted
wings,
but an old attendant touched my
hand.
She laid me down beside a sink,
and lathered me with myrtle
soap,
she scrubbed me with a bristle
brush
but didn’t speak, just wiped
her brow
as if up to her ancient thighs
she stood in mirrored pools
with
slanted sun and fields of rice.
She washed me like a child
until
I’d never lied, or misused love
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