like being on a movie set— cliche
of high rise apartments: cheap rates,
old, coin-operated laundry machines
in the basement; predominantly tenants
of color— students, interns, clerks,
transients, restaurant workers. Riding
up elevators like rising through
a fifteen layer cake warm with the scents
of curry and shoyu, fried onions, fish
sauce. Night and day laced with the alarm
of sirens from the Veterans’ Hospital
on the west side, the county hospital across
from the train station entrance— the same
one where they filmed a few scenes for
The Fugitive, Harrison Ford caught in a fugue
composed of Big Pharma and a one-armed man.
Everyone coming and going at all hours: nurses
with 16 hour shifts, sari-clad mothers
laden with grocery bags, salesmen stumbling
into the building near midnight. One
sweltering summer evening broken by sheets
of warm rain: and three brown-skinned exchange
students dare each other to go out on the bit
of grass near the entryway, to bathe their limbs
and upturned faces like they used to back in their
island home. The doorman on duty lights a lazy cigarette,
calls Hey! Do you want me to teach you some English?
They run back through the revolving door,
punch the elevator button and disappear.