Life is a brilliant red in Beijing. It is communism It is blood It is everywhere and too thick to notice My mundane was unique so they stole half written postcards to see the strange letters and they leaped into photos to see what boring scenes I found interesting. 60 miles sprawled with tenements 30 million existences of sameness and me who made the comrades curious I stopped and l looked at a nonexistent spot on the sidewalk A throng solidified instantly Switching glances between me and the spotless I stared at screamed whispers moved in tiny waves of absurd and serious The disbelievers gathered like an anti-Fatima as I bent to pick up a closely examined nothing Without letting on a smile or looking in a single face I walked away through a parting sea of people carefully holding air between my fingers as if it were an emperor's ring I became "the man who glances" They waved to me they followed me I was an expected circus that had come to entertain the billion.

Copyright © 1998, 1999 by J. Kevin Wolfe Feedback can be sent directly to J. Kevin Wolfe Look up other works by J. Kevin Wolfe in the Author Index. J. Kevin Wolfe writes professionally and writes poetry as therapy to relieve the trauma caused by writing professionally. His poems appear incessantly on the Web and have appeared in the print publications: Paris/Atlantic, Voice, One Dog Press, The Body Inside, Maelstrom, Along the Path, and "Silhouettes In The Electric Sky." He hopes someday to have enough money to lose day trading.

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