That spring she was pushing her cart
past puddles in the parking lot.
Asphalt glittered on cold, wet ground. 
Dull stars hid behind cardboard sky.

The stench of Crocker’s paper mill 
had followed her to this city
of coffee and chocolate croissants,
turning the river burnt orange. 

Once in the store with its sour milk
and too-ripe fruit, she filled her cart
with food she wouldn’t eat: cans of 
beans, cornmeal, manzanilla tea.

Smaller, darker women reached for
plantains and greens that spilled out of
tiny, cracked produce bins, just like
the ones from her late cousin’s store.

These women spoke rapidly.  She 
thought far too slowly.  They did not
speak French or German or English.
She had never learned how to speak

much Spanish.  Spring, before rain
or earth had a scent, before lilacs
bloomed on far-off hills, was empty.
And she lived alone in two cold rooms.

This Saturday night in April
would stretch to Sunday with nothing
to fill it. But soon she’d smell rain
and lilacs, fry plantains at night,

fill the rooms with all of these scents.
                        

Tinkling bells invited us in, told us
that we’d be happy here, even embraced
by this neighborhood of small shops, garden
apartments, new homes on the hill.  
Come New Years’ Day, the owner of Joy Luck
Produce gifted us a red calendar
for the kitchen we would soon be leaving.

We would abandon it for the next crew, 
pilots and flight attendants jammed into 
five immense rooms.  They were too big for us 
flightless birds huddling beside the heater. 
Soon we’d take the bus south. Even there
we’d have no joy, no luck, I told myself.

Now I tell myself any place has joy,
some luck.  I google Pam, the co-worker 
who used to give me rides, who died. As if
she survived, I see her thin, with long hair,
with kids. She lives outside Kew Gardens
where too few trees grew, where you and I clung,
waiting for the heat that bound us to break.
                        

—after a Boston Globe article by Kate Selig

Each September he thought about starting over,
finding a room on Wang Street above the cafes
and travel agencies, the open-air markets
and billiard halls, the one bookstore
run by Christian Scientists.

He wouldn’t mind a small room, even
one with a shared bathroom.  He imagined
learning Chinese, first a word here and there,
something he’d have to repeat to say right.
He'd test his neighbors’ patience.

He'd haul his box of books and few clothes
up four flights of stairs.  Wait.  He’d give away
the rest to friends from his neighborhood
of large houses and trees with signs in English.
With some books, he wouldn’t miss the trees.

He'd sleep little, rise early, go to bed late,
not let the street sounds, the buses from New York,
or shuddering trucks bother him.  
He’d eat little, buy his rice from the corner market,
not mind that the grains were white.

One summer he read about the woman on Wang Street.
She carried the bucket of ice up four flights of stairs,
soaked her thin blanket in melting ice, then hung
the cloth in her one window to catch the breeze
from hot asphalt, deep-fryers, the absence of trees.

Perhaps when he was younger he could have lived
the life he dreamed about in apartments shared
with English-speakers who drank lite beer, 
watched Fox, let fruits and vegetables rot.
Closer to the age of the woman on Wang Street,

he could not live the life he dreamed of.
Even if he knew he could sleep through
the trucks’ shudder, could study
the Tao te Ching each morning, even
learn a phrase or two of Chinese.

He knew that, like her, he could die there.