He laughs into the rear
vision mirror when you ask
his job. Tulips page past:

yellow plastic, sunset,
dried-blood red. And sakura:
blooming late, worried

under heavy pink.
‘I’m a host,’ he says,
lights a Lark cigarette,

‘I entertain women
at clubs.’ The car plunges
into the tunnel, tiny lights fur

the sides of your eyes,
you splash into white. A swatch
of pines crooks elbows

at the sky, a striped spire sends
clouds from a chemical factory.
‘So what do the women want?’ you ask.

‘To look, be touched,
to touch.’ Blue smoke
escapes the window gap,

kawara roofs shine by;
an old woman’s dragging
gumboots through a flooded

rice paddy at the foot
of a giant dam.
‘You wanna try?’