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Driving Eye

By Pimone Triplett Pimone Triplett

Bangkok

Caught in a slip of particulars,

say, between the dirt road

and the brand-new

Seven-Eleven, a bucket

of lotus, three shades of red

in the mudbank giving way to

workers, faces hidden

behind kerchiefs, binding

the copper tines of another

half-constructed building,

this fretwork, that rooftop’s

progress up and up, the eye riding

a motor’s rev, coming to

a woman who leans

over the seventh story’s edge

for the pulley rope’s

basket of rice or rubber mallets,

then a sweep down into

cattle now, their beige skin

over bones, the look of loose tents,

or taking in a bronze

Buddha, hands folded over the First

National Melting Company,

the red gate, black gate,

red, retina arriving

at a man throwing straw

clumps to earth so the seeds

don’t wash away,

and the light behind him washing

away,

and this desire, a gaze

shot along the border which is

shaped like a question mark,

cramped with hotels, pink neon

grammars blinking

Alpha, Alpha, Alpha Is

The Bank For You And Your

Needs, another quick catch,

the glance stippled

with disappearances,

a girl who lifts her skirt

to bathe near the bus stop,

a fire

burning/burnt/burning

in the field of bulldozers,

an eye trying to fix itself

as the vehicle turns,

the mind from

nascent to nation,

drifting in instances, a grit

in wind worrying

the surface, the facts,

out to finger the invisible

gap we would inhabit, pulsing always

in between.

Biography

Pimone Triplett is the author of The Price of Light (Four Way Books, 2005) and Ruining the Picture (Triquarterly / Northwestern, 1998). She holds an MFA from the University of Iowa. Currently, she teaches at the University of Washington and the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.

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