The Melting Pot

The Melting Pot

The Melting Pot

Sick in New York, in Chinatown,
I go to a Ukranian doc
who gives me a shot in the arm and says
“Straight to bed for you, my friend.” So I book

into the nearest run-down hotel,
no curtains in the windows, stains
like maps on the mattress, a hanger stuck
in the top of the TV, half cross, half weathervane.

For the first few hours I think I’m going to die.
Bathed in sweat, I lie on my back
flicking between grainy newsreels, kung-fu
soap operas and some kind of chat

show where everyone is shouting all the time.
And then I dream, neither awake nor asleep:
a tiny Chinese man is calling out my name
from the bottom of a stairs, and up

where I am stretched out, a kid whose hands
are covered in food, in blood, leans over me until
his face is a mirror to mine, and smiles.
“Island?” he says. “Never heard of it.”