A moment this sunday morning at the pool,
the sun just rolling up over the bar's roof,
I knew that if somehow I could carve away
the indolent penknife slivers, capture
the halogen tadpole that that great ball reflected
on the water's surface, I would learn to manage.
The water was up to my ribs, and the pool's
floor torqued an unmappable expanse.
But the gangster named Chen Jing-Hsing, murderer,
rapist, kidnapper on the run, shooting out
too many eyes, bragging, in some plasma fog, to whores,
talked four hours from the home of the South African
Military Envoy to Taiwan, whose family
he held hostage, and this TV audience
shyly understood his anger; his wife arrested,
his friends dead. These roots of these peculiar flowers.
In arrogantly poor Mandarin, those little
scooter theives from the American School flip off
the TVBS Special Report, shout
wô jìao wô de LAWYER, ta hùi SUE nî! Qù sì le!
Over the fitness room looms a transmission tower,
and behind my head, the red red Yuan Shan Da Fan Dian,
the green nappy shrubs cover the hills all the way to Keelung.

w™ j“ao w™ de LAWYER, ta h�i SUE n”! Q� s“ le is Americanized Mandarin Chinese; roughly "I name my lawyer, he knows how to sue you. Go to hell!" Yuan Shan Da Fan Dian is the Grand Hotel in Taipei, Taiwan.

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