Sapa & Dong Xuan Market

from Chai: Travel Poems by Marc Nair feat. Neon & Wonder

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lyrics

Sapa
Why is there so much beauty in the broken?
One girl’s purity is another tourist token.

Some men take the prettier as brides;
the plainer ones, never to be married,

are the hour-long stops on sex tours.
Tradition opens like a purple orchid,

keeps her tribal costume on and smiles,
even when it hurts down there.

In Hmong villages dogs are raised as pets,
then are sold to be slaughtered.

Dong Xuan Market
Women weave baskets around themselves,
spilling bamboo shoots into the narrow passage.
They make me sit for a cup of tea, far too sweet.
I smile at one who looks like my grandmother.

A jack-knife, turned the wrong way, springs
blood into the lines of my hand. It is good
for opening letters, the peddler mimes, also skin,
veins and boys dressed in black and leather anger.

From the upper floors, fabric roars like a waterfall
struck by rainbows, rivers of silk and linen spool
from shrieks of children. I drape a cascade of purple
around myself, pretend I am king of these colours.

The opium pipe still tells a true story.
Turning its ivory, I see ships crossing spice-
laden oceans. But the ends are blocked.
Dead - a weapon put to sleep.