By MARC VINCENZ
So—in they slot and plop in their perfectly
burnished 180-calorie-sandwiched-glory:
a delectable mélange well-clothed in filigrees
of dietary fibers, sodium, zero trans fat
and generously acidic to keep the heebie-jeebies
at bay—(some, they say, reach as far as Antarctica
in thermally-insulated triple-ply, deeply wrought
plastics and other recently uncovered carbon
derivatives—where winds are measured
for incremental fluctuations, where solar flares
are forecast and forewarned, where they read
the beginning and end of stars and the backlash
of East Asian tsunamis)—they glare bright-eyed
in their ginger and chocolate grins, in buttered oatmeal
and butterflied wings—as if finally the Sun reveals
himself in all his shiny glory from behind heady clouds
or that two week Luna de Miel with its long walks
along the Seine—here, among the boardwalks,
the tulipped promenades, within the boisterous
kite-flying parks that line the fairways, leaves of cypress,
ash, oak and acorn burst in the floppy green of carbon-
dioxide, in the piñata emerald of carbon-monoxide,
just as Mr. Daniel Ng (a/k/a, Ying Lee) glitters starlike
springing in his morning stride to his own jefe
at García & Sons, where at midsun he will finally
underwrite Doctor Rujapani’s overdue income tax statement,
as starlings, sparrows and blue jays assemble in pecking order
on their own aspen on Pine St. behind the old Empire Theater—
a place once proud to feature Chang the Magnificent Miracle Man
or the Tap Dancing Rubberband Twins, way back when—
on a Sunday Matinee at 4:00 pm when all cigars smoked …
As the giggles of the voluptuous Can-Can girls
in their petticoats and fishnets echo backstage,
Orpheus returns from the underworld with angel cake.
Marc Vincenz was born in Hong Kong, is Swiss-British and has published eight collections of poetry; his latest are This Wasted Land: and Its Chymical Illuminations and Becoming the Sound of Bees. A book-length poem, Sibylline, is forthcoming with Ampersand Books.
