by Chase Ambler

Bangkok Beggars

The fruit cart creaks by the young brothers.
The legless one tries to glare a baht or two out of his cup.
Empty—except for the sweat that just fell from his hair.
The older brother narrows in on the rambutan, focusing right
through the furry skin, straight to the dripping flesh.
They lock their stomachs and focus on the competition:
the thin whining of a Thai violin two spots down.

Hemidactylus Frenatus

He called me Chichak,
watched me hunt around the light bulb.
He inspected ceilings, walls, closet doors,
and found no ropes, no wires, no strings—
so I was magic.
He felt behind,
realized his tail was gone.
Everyday he rubbed, scratched,
asked why mine grew back so quickly—
I couldn’t tell him.
But I chirped “chichak” to him when
he climbed the palm tree.
His mother thought ‘monkey’ as
he scrambled up the smooth trunk—
but his fingers stuck like mine.
Now I’m just Gecko. From shadowed corners I watch him click-clack at the keyboard. He can’t hear my voice over the sound. When he lays in bed he doesn’t ponder my fingers anymore.

My Girlfriend’s Grandpa

Why does he point to
everything with that finger?
Back in India, leprosy hung
where digits once extended.
At stoplights they scrambled
to the windshield. Frenzied
newspaper buffing without
real hands.
Even though he’s all the way
across the porch, the stump’s
prodding my stomach. I
have to stop looking at it.
When he lopped it off his
nerves screeched. Lepers
don’t even notice when
they lose theirs. A stump
will always look diseased.
I have to stop.

Flesh

As I nestle
in your pillow-breast,
roll my fingers over
the knolls of your stomach,
you say you’re fat.
I tangle my gangly fingers
with your fleshy ones,
echo that you’re sultry,
but you mutter about
losing weight. It drains my
tingling spine and
I imagine anorexic girls,
my nakedness mirrored.
I am no Narcissus.

Two Stags

Around one a.m. the cemetery chooses one or two.
If you drive down the unlit road that flanks the graves
you can sometimes catch them on their night off.
A fox slinks from bush to bush, a raven from tree to tree.
As I came thorough the brisk black, tonight, the apparitions came into view.
Two stags walked from the field to the stop sign at the corner.
As I pulled up, they slowed and halted.
We studied each other—
majestic antlers crowning their slender heads,
stilt legs holding firm to the ground,
white hinds glowing through the black.
Suddenly I was self-conscious—
the old grime and smoke of my engine choked me,
the blasting speakers unnerved the night air,
the metal, the rubber, the leather, the glass.
The two studied me in silence,
remembering the world they left behind,
hopefully glad to be rid of its ugliness.



Bent willow reaches,
water split by string branch tips—
A leaf slips away.

Breath in weary trees
cuts paper leaves from their nests—

The slow current draws.
Tracing-paper clouds
still over midnight water—
Men call between boats.