Found Poem

"a piece of heaven"

"a piece of heaven":
a parched, half-built
apartment complex.
Life is a pack of goats
chewing their way
through a mound of trash.

Life is young Chinese saleswomen
in ill-fitting miniskirts:
"Don't worry,
all these houses will be torn down."

If the saleswomen seemed
unmotivated,
it was because they had little
to sell.

Life is this faded Silk Road
pit stop
where a skyline once dominated, 
now flecked with cranes
and high rises.

A salesman
of European View Gardens:
"In five years
come back here.
Come back here.
COME BACK.
In five years,
come back here.
You won't recognize the place."


From "An Old Oasis Promises New Prosperity for Some" by Andrew Jacobs (The New York Times)