GETTING OFF WORK AT THE TOPLESS BAR

by TOM RUSSELL



The alley behind The Gulf Club
ran the length of skid row
At three in the morning
two cops were standing over
an old man
who had jumped from the top floor
of a flop house
"He's missing an eyeball, watch your step."

The alley looked like a crime scene photo:
death and blood running down the gutters
and off the edge of the photograph.

Signs from Chinese laundries
in the 1930s
were still half visible
on wet brick walls.

Further down, towards Main Street,
there were two back-door Chinese chop joints
named The Green Door and The Red Door.
You knocked
and walked into steamy dens
where ancient men stirred woks
of meat and vegetables
while chattering in non-stop Chink dialects
about coming over the ocean, maybe, as stowaways
shanghaied in the bottom of tramp steamers.
Their teeth were worn into fangs
the color of ivory Mah Jong tiles.

So I drove past the dead man
Past The Green Door and The Red Door
Past the laundries, and the topless bars,
and the shooting galleries
and I thought bout the little green opium bottles
that my wife and I had dug up
in a vacant lot near Mott street.

Opium that came cross the ocean
smuggled in wooden boxes filled
with hand-blown green bottles.

Opium that was twirled and fired
and blown up into the lungs
of wrinkled men on wooden pallets
in the cribs near the Sun Mee Ling Laundry.

And now there's an old man
in black pajamas
chasing a rat with a broomstick
near the Wo Fat Company.

The moon lights up the wet alley
of chop joints
and fading Chinese laundry signs
and that pyramid of empty mushroom tins
dripping briny juice and water
onto the broken asphalt
behind Only Seafood Cafe.


Mystery Island Bottled Message No. 1
"Getting Off Work at the Topless Bar" by Tom Russell. Launched: 1.30.05 by Mystery Island. © Copyright Mystery Island Publications 2005. All rights reserved. This work appears in print in the Tom Russell book: Tough Company, also published by Mystery Island Publications. New edition coming: December 2007.



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