Egg Rolls

I was walking down First Avenue and knew
my check wouldn't clear for another two days and I had two tokens
and a can of tuna at home and an old roll which wouldn't be so bad
if I warmed it up in the oven and there was some cheese they let me take home
from the graduate student reading except my roommate had already eaten
most of it he was pretty good about not touching my stuff but I guess he knew
this wasn't really "mine" in the sense that I hadn't paid for it
since it was just rolled up in some party napkins half of it sliced
the other half a big cube and I had exactly seven dollars in my pocket
which was my train fare to and from school the next day
I went to Sarah Lawrence where the flowers were in bloom
and everyone in the town had shiny blond hair and pastel turtlenecks
and I tutored a woman who had all her meals catered macrobiotic
delivered right to her dorm and I knew she'd feel bad for me if she knew
I ate fish from a can she'd feel bad like my dad did the time he visited me
and he saw my 39 cent chili which I bought from a supermarket cart
where they dump all the food with expired codes and the dented cans
and my father said don't eat this you could die botulism
and he said it like I'd botched up and that botulism was a disease
that hit people like me who didn't have enough to open a checking account
who cashed checks and just lived off the money until it was gone

it's easy to feel sorry for my former self
the one that wanted to go to grad school so bad she was a nanny
and a receptionist and taught at a nursery school and cashed all her savings bonds
to buy a $200 car that died the day after she bought it
because she hoped it would make her life easier and the mechanic said
it would be at least $900 to fix so she just junked it and refused to eat
because everything she tried was an ugly mistake a sour bargain
and there was no way she could get ahead or even make the time to feel her angst
to write a good workshop poem since she had to be at her job at five
in the morning where she was a receptionist in a health club
and they gave her a big gold key that looked like a key to the city
and she was the first one to get there and turn on the whirlpool
and sort the accounts and vacuum the carpet where rich women did aerobics
and she only worked until one so it seemed like a good job and her boss told her all
about the new diets that if you just waited until dinner to eat
then you could eat a whole pot of rice and that was only something like 600 calories
and stay away from cherries and grapes and all small fruits because the smaller
the fruit the more sugar and she was supposed to eat apples because that's how
you get the most fiber with the least amount of calories and calories
that's what everyone talked about and she was so tired and hungry
that by the time she arrived at Sarah Lawrence she fell asleep in her literature class
and she knew it was an insult to the professor who was stern and took it seriously and she

did too so that's when she learned about coffee and diet pills
and how to stay awake even on days when she woke up at 3:30 a.m. and took a shower
in the dark since the shower was in the kitchen where her roommate slept
and she didn't want to wake him up even though she must have woken him
the water itself hissing in that plastic stall and she usually tripped on something and she
had begun to hate him anyway since she found his rent bill and he was charging her
$450 even though his rent was only $500 and that was just New York her friends said
don't confront him he could kick you out and where else
was she going to live for $450 a month just ignore the mother cockroach she saw
diving in the bread crumbs and the baby cockroaches that scattered
in the kitchen sink and the hot pipe she burned her leg on every time she peed
because that toilet was so small and the soles of her feet were black with grime
because she couldn't get the floor clean and why should she try
she was paying most of the rent she shouldn't have to be the maid
her bedroom was so small she had to roll her futon up if she wanted anyplace to stand
and she wrote her poems with her typewriter on her lap but still she wrote them and
she never felt so bad for herself really because she was in New York
on the corner of First Avenue and First Street where everything began
and most of the time she felt like she had everything
except that time she smelled those egg rolls
the ones wafting from the Chinese restaurant and she told herself

maybe I should run home and sell my subway tokens to my roommate and walk
the forty blocks to work tomorrow in the frigid dark and have one of those egg rolls
the ones with shrimp bits and light green vegetables inside and I fingered
my seven dollars the five and two ones I carried with me
just in case the apartment was robbed and I stopped and looked in the window
the egg rolls lined up like sleeping bags under fluorescent light and the cook smiled
the Chinese man with a gray ponytail and white bibbed apron and I went in
and asked how much and bought two because they were small
and ate them on the street grease burning my lower lip
the hot insides burning the roof of my mouth you're supposed to drink milk
that's the only way to cure that scorch something about the protein
healing the cells of the tongue but I had no milk so I blew into the egg roll
like a mother blowing on her baby's spoon
or like a diva testing a microphone and the whole city hushed
as I squeezed the greasy napkin and it was like I was singing a torch song
but I wasn't that sad that I wouldn't have the money to go to school tomorrow
or that my diet was shot and I actually remember feeling kind of rich

From Two and Two (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005)