Performative rain
Poetry from "An American Mouth in Thailand"
This piece is part of a mini-series based on a recent trip.
What body parts are okay to shoot? With a super-soaker on Songkran.
A red belly. A sublime solar plexus. An open heart.
Eyes are off limits. But the ear. That’s the Death Star killshot.
When a child gets a good shot on me, I splatter my guts and fake my death. Children love the illusion of the power to kill. Joy is a plastic weapon and fire that cools on a hot day. It simulates the rain that needs to come so we don’t starve, so that we can still eat money, and not ourselves. But not too much rain.1
When does the joy shift? I walk w/my plastic gun, perhaps resembling the ones who come to push the limits of what’s on offer from those who cannot eat money, who rely truly on rain.
A Burmese stranger slathers scented mud on my face. Is it good or bad mud? Only tomorrow’s face rash will tell.
“Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish been caught, and the last stream poisoned, will we realize we cannot eat money.” Native American proverb, possibly Cree or Osage origin, possibly apocryphal.