Sally Albiso

Spitting

Beijing starts campaign to end spitting
China

Spitting, that scourge,
afflicts the public life of Beijing:

the expectorating masses who crowd its streets
sliming sidewalks and transfixing foreigners

with the frequency and volume of their habitual hawking,
the dribbled evidence of so many souls

who refuse to swallow their sputtering excess,
discharging their phlegm like an argument

to be negotiated, a tenuous sidestepping
of their spewed quarrel, an embarrassment to officials

determined to enforce the right way to spit:
into a tissue or spitting bag

to be deposited in the trash, the bags
handed out by volunteers in orange uniforms,

bright as a future free of salivary excretions,
the character tan, mucous, in yellow on the back.

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