At a Poetry Reading

Tilting her head side to side like an irregular metronome,
she dramatized the dead Asian emperors with an inflection
that reminded me of a recording I once heard of Yeats.

She had a reading partner: an aging poet in a fedora
who had substituted his youth for a motor bike.
Even while describing his varicose veins,
loosening skin and fading eyesight,
women in the audience found him surprisingly enticing.
He admitted he could not mount his bike
without prescription glasses.
Sometimes, however, he would like us to believe
they were only shades.

Next up a re-imported poet stealing the stage.
The brand name shirt was distracting.
Her poem in twelve parts
detailing the demise of three sister tree twigs
in front of a window began to disappear
from my memory lane before she had even finished.
Strange, even the order of the months skipped away.
But I had not.


      Tammy Ho Lai-ming

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