In a far
district, where every week
Sherpas once conquered Everest,
recalcitrant Maoists are assaulting
another
police barracks, just as here,
despite the coils, the smoke, the rank
Jungle Cream, another tiny anopheline
has pierced
the porous perimeter
of my defenses. Thus in this milieu
of bullock cart and chakra, prayer
wheel and
dust, of opaque white eyes,
I will await the onset of the exquisite
ague, meditate until lysis commences
upon the
fading graffito paint-sprayed
on the flank of the Yak and Yeti Hotel:
Woman needs man like hawk needs rickshaw.
Roy Jacobstein's work has appeared or is
forthcoming in a number of venues including The Gettysburg Review,
Parnassus, Poetry Daily, Threepenny Review and TriQuarterly. He
received Prairie Schooner's 2003 "Reader's Choice" Award, and
nominations for the 2002, 2003 and 2004 Puschcart Prizes. His book, Ripe, a finalist for the Academy of American Poets' Walt Whitman
Award, won the University of Wisconsin Press's 2002 Felix Pollak Prize.
He is a physician working internationally in women's reproductive
health, and divides his time between New York City and Chapel Hill, NC.