At Lincoln Center

by Brett Rutherford

As if she knew it,
lost it and found
it again after
oh how many wars,
so many
obituaries read,

she, a bent old
squint-faced in
recognition
pink-coat woman
leaned dangerously,
picked up
with hand nearly as brittle,
the first brown leaf.

"Got you!"
she seemed to say.
She tucked it away
into her wrinkled
Macy's bag, then

giving the slant sun
a tsk-tsk, she
vanished before
I could blink to be sure
I had really seen her,
bag lady, hag
of the fountain,
nixie
of Lincoln Center's
high notes, horn-calls
and pas de deux.

Chinatown, 1975

by Brett Rutherford

Gossip among
young Asian men,
with whom I dine,
    a guest, a stranger,
yet somehow as in
    as they are out.

Outsiders always,
     some seldom stray
     North of Canal Street,
employment limited
to under-the-radar
exploited jobs, unless

the overseas mother,
the rich uncle,
paid one’s way
to a good school,
escape into
the melting pot.

Slowly, I learn
the pecking order:

the ABCs
(American-born Chinese),

rich Asians
     on monthly checks
     from anxious parents,
well-off Taiwan
    or Singapore families;

“jump ships,” the
mainland arrivals
     from Mao’s horrors,
cardless, furtive,
evading questions.

Americans see none of this,
each bowing waiter,
     each unseen worker
in kitchen or sweatshop,
a Charlie Chan cipher.

Outcast among
a colony of outcasts,
I am at home here
at this round table whose
lazy susan rotates
a casserole of friendship.

From here, we head out
for the Chinese opera.