How the train made of black capsules looked over the solid blue water at dusk, after the vacant lot
Rusted white cupolas dripping veils of orange corrosion
Pulse points of sodium lights and factory chimney top flames, but mostly
A long mirroring cloth of blue air and blue water
Jordan's new man told us he met a man in st. louis whose job is to sail from one end of the earth to the other unspooling fiber optic cable, laying it at the bottom of the ocean
but and there are other men too who descend into glass chambers under the ships
And stay underwater for weeks at a time as the craft roves the depth, working in shifts
Resting in solitude, yes, in the glow of their iPads
Shimmering a signal down from outerspace into the depths of the earth where the cord of the signals' core is laid
And us between, watching a noise ripple through the black train
Like god smacking a metal tub full of coal
But really a powerful wave passing from capsule to capsule
Gushing a river of deep-throated clatter
Fairy cilia of our little ears sparking to fuse a force field
Into the mush of our brains, bulging the globes of our beautiful eyes rolling around all around
When a man on the other side of the river steps out of a white pick up truck
Dressed head to toe in hot orange
Goes up to the train, bends, lifts an arm and releases
Pushing half the train off, sending it gliding
Down and away like a sliding glass door with no frame
****
I said, "I wonder what those are," pointing to the staggered metallic plates sticking out of the roof on one of the out houses in Bartram's Garden and Taryn said, "Those are snow jacks. My grandfather invented those."
Taryn said she cried when we were dancing at the Cambodian New Year's celebration because she was so grateful to be there, she couldn't believe how lucky she was, she'd just recently been in Cambodia and she said that it was just like it. I watched her dance - about thirty of us had been dancing in a slow-moving ring - that's one of the dances. One is a line dance, and one is you do whatever you want, but in a group of people that slowly goes around in a ring. I'd catch glimpses of her from another part of the ring.
Those were the main two things Taryn revealed. Oh, and she said, "Michael and I have known each other since high school," explaining the friend she'd brought with. Michael talked more than her, but not much, either. While we were standing on the water, between the abandoned lot and Bartram's Garden before climbing the fence into it, Michael stepped down from the concrete barrier he stood on, looking at the river, put his arms around me and said, "You are a really beautiful person and you're great to hang out with." Or something else shocking like that. I felt like he was about to kiss me, but then he might have also been gay. I couldn't understand and I dug my fingers into his shoulder to indicate that he'd stirred me.
Michael and Taryn had watched me and Bison walk toward them from the direction of the temple holding hands, after I let Bison lead me around the temple's back parking lot holding my hand, introducing me to everyone as his girlfriend and hugging them all. He said, "You are like my sister. She's gone. Both of our parents were murdered." I knew that his mother was murdered in a robbery that his step-father had survived, and his step-father now has cancer and is dying up in the Bronx, but I don't know a thing about Bison's dad. I'm not quite sure where Bison is from: I think Laos? One group of people was particularly freaked out at this image: Bison, near-dangerous drunk, holding hands with some mysterious white girl, who probably looked tense but also like I was about to laugh, and he said to them, "This is my girlfriend," pointing to me. "I don't remember her name." And then I started laughing.
He said, "Thank you for holding my hand." I said, "It's something I can give you." He said, "I am not interested in sex, I used to be, as a young man, now I am old. I am not interested in sex." I laughed and I said I understood, but really, I have my own theories.
The day before, surrounded by 12 or so teenage boys all smoking weed and calling themselves his sons and going off to buy him dime bags, and scanning the ground for a lost joint, two of them beautiful 18 year old twins who look 12, America's skinniest white boys wearing its baggiest sweatshirts and smoking its copperiest vape and hanging out in Bison's tent passing around a handle of vodka in the garden (long beans, pumpkins) he planted behind the temple, among the stone statues he keeps, twenty odd lions, some broken like goddesses, a Hanuman with a crushed Redbull in his hand an a plastic machine gun hanging around his neck, under a flower necklace, and a mermaid he painted patina green holding a black conch shell he said was expensive, supporting a 15-foot-tall bamboo pole with an American flag at the tip Bison made, he said to me, "I love you but I don't know why," in front of Jordan and Chris. He said, "Will you be my girlfriend?" And I said, "Absolutely not." And he laughed so hard. Chris he said looked like Hollywood, Jordan, he said looked like John Lennon. And the next day he said, "What do you think of me? I am a crazy man."
Bison was wearing the same calf-length black silk jacket with a dragon embroidered on the back, loose pants, boots with no laces, worn out captain's hat, and the giant talisman with a deer's horn and stone wrapped in rags that his Master gave him. His Master who he lives with in the temple, Bison sleeping under the bookcase full of silver urns full of people's ashes, and his Master in a room behind the altar, which is covered in gold statues, flowers, and has a giant polished elephant tusk. He says, "I love my Master." The day before had been sunny and he'd been wearing no shirt, revealing a giant scar on his stomach from his surgery. Sunday was overcast with and strange wind and he was wearing a baggy white sweater than reached almost to his knees. With his scar in the sun, he had told Jordan and Chris about a woman who had chopped up her husband, "chop! chop! chop! Chop!" and left the pieces on the floor of her apartment, so that the blood had dripped down from the ceiling of the neighbors below. Sunday he bought everyone I was with shots of Henessey. Smoking a joint in front of one of the stalls where they were grilling chicken and beef and sausages on sticks, which had been handed to him by one of his "sons" whose face was covered in flour (everyone had been throwing flour in each other's faces as part of the new year celebration --Taryn and Michael later appeared with flour on their faces, but I never got any on mine --
And well and slow, beautiful Cambodian rock from the stage reigned over this lot where maybe 1000 people were drinking in the backs of their cars or on blankets behind the food stalls, eating the meat on sticks, whole families, playing cards, the older generation in 70s style clothes, the younger dressed hip hop, and the oldest grandfather I saw, a synthesis in a grey pants and long grey tunic and a trucker hat reading "#FAIL, two monks in orange robes synchroniously turnnings as they filmed the scene, one on a phone and the other on iPad
Bison and I stood in front of the giant unfinished eating house that is covered in Tyvek Home Wrap and full of children - Cambodian and kids from the neighborhood who'd wandered into the monastery lot - running around in this open construction site, throwing silly string and shaving cream and flour and shooting off fire crackers and screaming. An amarinthine banner hangs over one of its unfinished doors reading "No Interference Is The Sinew of Peace)
He said, "I love you. Can you love me?" And I said, "No, I can't." He said, "..." I said, "I am young and stupid and you are old..." And he said, "And crazy." I said, "I don't think you are crazy." He said, "I have bipolar. The doctor says I have bipolar." I said, 'If you think you are crazy I believe you." He said, "I love you, but I love everyone," and he said, "Look at her." And pointed to a girl eating. "She is beautiful." He turned away from me. He'd been leading me around the festival making me stop every few paces to either point at something like two little girls scooping shaved ice from one cup to another, trading spoonfuls of each other's dessert like sand, and say, "Look! They are beautiful," or to talk to someone and embrace them and laugh with them, introduce me, say, "This is my brother," about everyone, because in his community, they all call one another brother and seem to mean it; everyone was glad to see Bison. When he turned back around to face me, a tear was rolling down his cheek. He had said, "I think about you when you're gone. What do you think of me?"
But when we went up to Taryn and Michael, Taryn, who I had met like a week ago and Michael that day, Bison was fine letting go of my hand, telling Michael he looked like Don Henley and Taryn like I don't remember what and talking about how he'd showered that day and it had felt good. He had said, "I just want to be loved for once in my life before I die." I said, "I can't do it," even though it's not true, its just that I don't want to be "his girlfriend." It feels like we're both 14. I should ask him if he likes chocolate. I don't want to bring him alcohol or cigarettes.
My tentative answer to Bison, "I think I know a little bit of why I love you." I didn't say that to him though.
My tentative answer to Bison, "I think I know a little bit of why I love you." I didn't say that to him though.
As I told them a lot of this, I led Taryn and Michael between heaps of mattresses, shit, rope, and broken bricks, glass, to the end of the road, to look at the river. Then, Bartram's Garden was lush green with purple, and yellow and white blooms, with a perfect green meadow dotted with yellow, the trees not yet leaved, leading us up the back, and no one was there as we quietly wound our way through.
