TAKE-OUT CALENDAR

Only one month on the Chinese Take-Out calendar
Pictures an aerial photograph of a section of The Great Wall.
Strangely, all such photos show no one walking there,
And through the early morning film it’s easy to imagine
Dragons ducking out of sight
In an ancient form of ambush;
Naked, save for blowing leaves eddied in currents snaking the bending
walk
In ways which seem built and named
For a thousand warriors exchanging their regimented blocks with new
reserves…
The photo of other months sour with twisted maples intertwining
elongated drooping oak chins
And corpse-like eye sockets
Burrowing into cover where giant snakes sleep
Save for the time when an intruding climber wakes them up…
The month of the Lunar New Year is a confetti collage;
A multi colored carpeting more than just a garbage dump
Of upswept fish heads
and entrails butcher knifed into sausage patties.
Here, the luncheon special chalk boards “Egg Foo Young”
As if it were a favorite indigenous dish,
More than just a bastardized hybrid of what American’s idolize as
Chinese.
Some months picture a river bend
As wide as any oceanic bay,
Bristled at the edges with rice paddies,
And the distant shoulder of an ox
Churning while he steps in place as if making wine or butter;
As easily thought of as rice.
There’s nothing more in this room left for dreaming
Or for any subtle hook
To jar our imagination of anything;
Certainly nothing as far away and dreamy
As a Chinese Take-Out calendar.

                                                                      By Ken Siegelman
                                                                       Brooklyn Poet Laureate, January, 2009