Manhattan/Bali: A Jet Lag in Fragments

                                             Under jet lag... something deeper is dissolved... you lose all sense of
                                             who and where you are... You feel like an exile, a fugitive of sorts...
                                                                          — Pico Iyer

Sunrise on my eyelids
The clop of law enforcement horses
Smooth motion of a trolley suitcase rolling through a terminal under renovation 
Menorah of smokestacks
Vibrato of hummingbird wings
The canceled and delayed arrivals of sleep
A Boeing 767 floating towards the borough of Queens
On a white ceramic plate a brown pool of peanut sauce and six sticks of chicken satay
An immense square hole—just dirt in between two buildings 
Where the bombs exploded 
Nusa Dua Nusa Dua
Fire hydrants like midget amputees
Goldfish visible then disappearing swiftly in echoes of concentric circles 
Rain in the waking 
Rain before sleep
A taco truck parked on West 14th
Mannequins swathed in kamben in every storefront window
One small banana leaf-box filled with rice grated coconut and one red 
Bougainvillea blossom
The detonation here
The attack there 
Sound of a pizza being sliced into eight isosceles slices
Women adorned in yellow-gold walking in a long straight line
Trays balanced on their heads with piled symmetries of mango and apple
“Are you carrying anything fresh, live or lethal?”
Velvet ropes and beyond them only a single rose for sale
Cantankerous monkeys guarding the shoreline temple
Tentacles of sautéed octopus swaying like the arms of the Shiva
A Customs form with rows of empty boxes to X or check
“Honey, please rub some sunscreen on my back”
Kuta Kuta Kuta Ubud	
Fire escapes lined with potted geraniums with petals the size of Christ’s stigmata
Gods with expunged faces
Waves churning and frothing beneath the Whitestone Bridge
Oysters inside their marble tombs on crushed ice at the raw bar
Green shadows of the feeding cranes in the fields of Peliatan
Bouncers with guest lists where men with bloodstained aprons stood 
Dismantling lambs with chainsaws 
The aircraft rising slightly during its descent
Canines in rabid packs patrolling unpaved roads
Tinkling bracelets encircling the ankles of dancers where I also heard the sea
A pair of winter boots unoccupied outside each apartment door
One brown leather mangled glove palm-up on the sidewalk  
Wet footprints impressed in beach sand vanishing upwards from below.

Peter Marcus | Subterranean
Contents | Mudlark No. 55 (2014)