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“Growing up, we could make up two cricket teams with the young guys around here. Not anymore.”

Trevor Chen sits with his brother Stephen inside Sei Vui Club in Tiretti Bazaar, Kolkata’s old Chinatown. They’re waiting for the rest of the...

I was participating fully in Life,

or so my calendar said,

when I had the spiritually extravagant

gift of being heart-struck,

standing before a painting.

Flagged to a halt by a woman in boots
and an oiled canvas coat, we stopped for her

orange flag on the highway yesterday in
the first flurries of the season and watched

Bridget is on her way to Mong Kok to buy a goldfish. She’s been told that they bring good luck.

I’m docked at a lake that

the people don’t attend. 

Machete on my hip to 

make a devil cough up 

A paycheck. A nadir. Hired as accompaniment
for sequined swimmers in an amphitheater in Queens.
To keep the band working. A footnote.

It must be so hard to be Miles Davis

and a ghost, and to sit in my kitchen

as I squeal along on a dime-store horn