Search All Winners

I’m sure you won’t believe this,

but if a policeman walks behind me, I tremble:

What would Shaft do? What would Shaft do?

Bits of my courage flake away like dandruff.

I’m sweating even as I tell you this.

I’m not cool.

I keep the real me tucked beneath a wig,

I’m a small American frog.

I grow beautiful as the theatre dims.

I realize then that Wichu knows. Of course he knows. He was here, at this temple, outside of the pavilion with his mother, when Khamron got drafted years ago. He was here when the wealthier boys got taken out of the line. He was here when those same boys came back an hour later, took their places at the end of the lottery line, and—when their turns came—drew black card after black card after black card. Wichu had told me all about it the night of his brother’s draft. Although I had only half listened to him at the time, the memory of his voice comes back to me now in all its anger.

“Draft Day” from SIGHTSEEING © 2005 by Rattawaut Lapcharoensap; reprinted with the permission of the publisher, Grove Atlantic, Inc.

If there is a ground, then there are bodies beneath it.

If the bodies know my name, then I am said to be protected.

If I am spoken for, then I could've died a number of times.

If I am still here, then I am speaking for the dirt.

If there is dirt, then there is my mouth wet and ripe with questions.

What you type and submit appears to you attributed to You. What he replies and enters comes from Partner. There is, as it turns out, a lot to say while watching Partner look at you watching. He is, to begin with, in a room of some kind, particular, contingent, “real.” With art and clocks and books and pillows and cigarettes and mail and daylight, or lamplight, with a bed or desk or basement sofa, with doors you can ask him to open, bags he may or may not empty, of content you may deduce about. The bottoms of his socks are dirty. You give it to him that his socks are dirty, that his door is ajar, that his grin is telling. “Partner: Are you for real?”

HELENA: You okay?

THE GIRL: Jus’ let me sleep, I say I fine, whot number I is?

HELENA: Whot number whot?

THE GIRL: Whot number wife? He say dere is a rainkin’.

HELENA: Ah, ah… number four, you number four.

THE GIRL: Whot number is she?

HELENA: Tree.

THE GIRL: So who Number Two?

I feel I could eat women.

Driving alone, I’m hungry,

hawking bus stops and sidewalks.

Eyeballs grinding, I harden.

My mind, a bulging ice box.

My computer, a deep freeze.

The bingeing grows out of hand –

my wastebasket coughing up

the napkins hiding the bones.