I am in Taiwan

I am in Taiwan

or Hong Kong. I’m

staying in a tiny

apartment or hotel

room, I don’t speak

the language or know

the streets. The hotel

has a restaurant, with

mitred windows like

the ones in Don Draper’s

apartment. The menu

frustrates me, there is

nothing I can eat there,

except pork fried rice.

I am biting some kind

of shape, in little pin

prick teeth marks, into

the flesh of a Gary-figure.

Is it the shape of a

heart.  His girlfriend

is white, and blonde,

and inflatable. I pick

her up by her tiny ankles,

she’s wilting, and swing

her around my head

as a lasso. I’m in

some kind of “dating

arrangement,” a trip

on a ferry. There are

two young women

with bobbed hair

and plucked eyebrows.

They show a video

of themselves singing

a nostalgic song

with great rhymes,

they are like out of

Busby Berkeley.

One woman’s

elaborately

latticed

sweater. I

am set up

with a guy who

doesn’t like me.

There is another

woman with amazing

curves. Is it Japan? On

the ferry ride, I am outdoors

on deck, and an androgynous

person, an artist, starts decorating

the ballroom as an art project

with drawings of cherry

blossoms then hangs fake

cherry blossoms in 3D

from the ceiling. I am

on acid.  In a tub.

I have all these

colored gels.

I keep swirling them

around in the water.

I am kissing someone.

Who am I kissing.

I am staying with my

mom. I am back in

Japan or about to

go back to Japan. 

I am packing a tiny

suitcase.  I have to leave

lots of things behind, it’s

chaotic: shoes, sweaters.

I receive word that Gary

has killed himself.  I am

inconsolable, I cannot

stop weeping.  Everyone

is full of theories about how

it happened.  They blame

me. I realize it is all my

fault.  I’m in my room.

It has tatami, and sliding

glass doors that open

onto a terrace.  It’s a mess.

There is stuff everywhere.

I keep trying to clean it up

but I am lying down. 

It’s public, people walking

in and out, through my room.

There are piles of white gloppy

birdshit everywhere.  I look up

to see a swallow’s nest

in the eaves.  A huge toad

leaps across the tatami.

Nemo pounces on it

and starts to eat it. Then

I am out at dinner with

Clyde.  There is a woman

there who looks like me,

but more beautiful. She

is oozing sex.  Clyde says

“she is the one to choose,

she is ready to choose.” 

I make a mental note:

I need to be like her.

Then I am in my room

again and Drew asks me

if I can sew. He knows

I can sew.  He wants me

to make a scrubs shirt

out of a pair of scrubs

pants.  I tell him I am

too busy, I don’t have time,

I have to clean up my room,

but he gets very angry when

I say that, and throws

the pants at me.