Sunday, January 1, 2012

Ode to a Blind Shanghai Masseur


A Shanghai friend
Recommended your healing hands
So we traveled to the city’s west
My wife and I waiting on twin tables
While the interpreter lead you and your colleague in

Your hands worked out my kinks
The strained shoulder
The displaced vertebrae
Until you asked me to roll over
And your hand grazed my unruly Canadian beard

Your gay laugh echoed
Naïve and high pitched
Like a frightened bird
The interpreter told us
You were shocked to feel such alien, animal hair

Your eyes could not see
My curly red chin cover
Like steel wool or pubes
You had touched a chimera
Of Scottish and Irish and Inuit and French

And so we laughed
Two blind Chinese masseurs
One Chinese interpreter
My Japanese wife
And mixed Inuit French Irish Scot Canadian me

Five people laughing together

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