Bargains

you asked me, your only baby.

mama in mama’s house, baby in baby’s!

i said, leaping onto your blue gray vespa. you straddled

behind me, knees pinching my legs, & steered our way

through the city’s boiling traffic.

with you i bargained, a fledgling flapping wings

in a city where filial children don’t leave well-

spring far. oh—kay—, i declared over the exhaust’s sporadic coughs,

we may be neighbors when i have my own family.

by the crossroad, you let the throttle

recoil under your grip; rest your chin

on the crown of my head, between the pigtails you tied too tight.

___

eighteen years later, near a swimming-pool-turned-

lotus-pond, you & i share a basin of crawfish,

each building a mountain with cracked armors.

between us, your new baby, sat by his screen.

incense coils against gnats around our ankles.

a peppercorn flees down my sheer blouse.

we squat-sit, peel shells, let chili oil numb our

tongues. i am full. you persist; busy your chopsticks

in the remains. you ask again:

i pick off a rice grain stuck to your chin.