Staring from a window
on the south side of Soho
was a young Chinese lady
with noodles in her bowl.
The new year was festooned:
hung in red and yellow;
bright, plastic moons under
a black, frozen sky.
She was poised, with boney shoulders
and a flower in her hair,
a claw tightly pinched around
the chopsticks dipping down.
From high, powdered cheeks
she was watching all outside,
stirring the noodles
to pass a little time.
The night was rising fast
and the streets of Chinatown
were random with the flow
of strangers out, abroad;
gazing in the windows
at the decorated bowls
under jagged neon signs
that spilt across the road.
The workers and the police
were carried by a swell
as the tightly-buttoned tide
lapped the diners to the doors;
the glass on every front
had faded to a frame
and the stir-fry in the pans
was smelt by burning eyes.
The girl looked out and stared
through the glass that wasn’t there
and alone she sat and ate
another noodle from her bowl.