Bangladesh, you are across the street.

For only 25 cents per hour, I am transported here.

In the White Swan Laundromat in Brooklyn: the Spanish children play,

The Pakistani men bully me subconsciously, by throwing their
armless sleeves over my laundry.

The guy with the Red Eye keeps glaring at my Half Smile.

The Chinese owners yell “Number eleven! Number eleven”

(that means, “Number eleven, your clothes are dry, get your shit out of the dryer!”)

There are three small kids: a boy about half the size of his Mother’s humility, his
sister who is plump as can be, and another skinny one to boot.

This is how the game goes: “I kick you, you kick me back, I run. I cry, you stop.”

“If I don’t stop, I’ll do a karate chop (yes, in front of me, the “Chinita”) and then you take me down.”

“On the ground, you wrap my skinny legs like a twist tie, while I squirm on the floor. When I get up, I’ll kick you in the shin and run.”

“She laughs when I kick her. I run out the door. She chases me. My other sister runs back in and punches me in the face. I punch her back. We laugh as loud as life permits.”

“I climb up to the pay phone and pretend to make a call. My sister pushes me off, the rope snaps as I cling… Mom turns in horror at this mock suicide.”

“Is she mad at me or the consequence of a broken phone?”

“I pull the mask of wounded eyes over my face. She goes over to Sis and raises her arm up high for a smack,

without touching her, without the slightest of hand…

with Mother’s scorn alone

Sister Cries.”

I sit near the girl… she weeps silently… banished from her Mother’s Love.

So I see, the bruise-fest could not get her to flinch, but the absence of mother’s love:

nothing is more terrible in the world!

So this: Is Love!

And though I tried not to contemplate, I feel every single tremor. Suddenly I wear Sad Eyes.

Her brother comes over with his wounded peanut face
he tries to distract her from her tears.

I go to feed the meter another quarter… and head across the street to Bengal.

In the Bangladesh eatery,
I feel like I need not travel further:
to escape from America, from the Suburbs, from trendy Five-faced Artists, New Yorkers, or anything Others (like to define as being halfway Normal), Fitting In, Being like Everyone Else.

I am in a third world country. My lover of three years has left me for Israel. I have no family. I have no home.

I am banished from Mother’s Love. So I enjoy being here: hearing only the tongues of Bengalis, seeing the Sun of their Home stained on their faces, watching them yell at immigrants lesser than they. And for 25 cents, this trip is cheap – but worth more than all the luxuries my life can offer.

Outside the window, I see only Immigrants… their cargo. Muslim children, masked women, beaten up cars, desperate faces showered with pride when greeting their own kind. To forget who I am, I come here. To remember who I am, I come here.

I am nobody, just like them. My Truth lies – Buried deep in America; places where nobody wants to be, because to be real is to be “animal.” We are jungle people. We do laundry with the dirt. We eat food of filth.

I would rather be made of Mother’s flesh, blood and vile – than the Sterile cold cross of Mary. For when she takes her hand away – I am dead. And when she touches me, I am Beautiful despite what others think.

We must always begin, where the filth begins. It is what makes us.

I stink like an immigrant, for I am Home.

20051017/ New York