Eileen Tabios
RESPECT
I am beginning to count the bricks that form the building across Broadway.
This is why
you fail to appreciate my addiction to opium. The sun prepares its bed,
transforming
bricks from grey to the color of your cheeks ruddy in a winter chill. And
I feel apples
begin to fall in orchards upstate. Soon, vinegar will scent the air and
it will be a
dissonant note that will please.
And the rain continues so! I long for bystanders to release the impoverished
umbrellas
they cling to despite their broken spines. (How long, after all, must servitude
be forced?)
The only stolid umbrella bobbing insouciantly in the air is stamped with
a corporate logo:
feel the impatient drumming of your fingers on the tabletop.
You also disappointed me in Portugal. The bar boasted of 500 different
bottles of port.
Consistency prevailed when what was offered differed from the advertisement.
But you
forced me to stay because you thought the "atmosphere interesting."
I faced no choice
but to interpret your fascination with a fur-clad dancer at a nearby table.
Her lips were
painted crimson but I was bothered most by her hair which she wore up and
threaded
through with thin, black ribbons. My throat was elegantly white, its throbbing
vein
elegantly blue, but how to compete?
This is where fragmented syntax fails to suffice. I, too, might as well
moan through the
fado. That, or be an old man huddled in a confidence with the bartender
as we watch
another woman accompany a guitar. Afterwards, she would join us, slowly descending
from the make-shift stage, her ample hips swaying, her eyes looking only sideways,
her
breasts robust and proudly raised. Still, we would greet her with respect: our
eyebrows
never would rise, never would suspect.