Andrena Zawinski

Reading Early Morning

Men work the street, pound and scrape the block
with jackhammer, shovel and pick. I try to read
early morning about Li Po's boys on bamboo horses,
girls playing with blue plums. Six work the walk.
Four watch a long tongue push wet lumps of gravel
to the hole. They spread cement, flatten in
the noise. No pastoral or poetry here, just men
who work the street, break my morning read
in a gray slab of square I wait to finish off
with my pressed in hands. Woman at the edge
of losing legendary fortitude, I close windows,
read on to Wang Fu Tai where a wife's loyalty
hardens to rock at the Wall waiting for
the husband that never returns. I close the last
window to the heat and Bryan's churn, smother
the street with silence so dead it hangs white
and thick as a blanket of offseason snow.

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“Reading Early Morning” first appeared in Painted Hills Review No. 8.