A kind of magic den with everything
from love potion #9 to cures
for cancer-

This morning, for example, swallowing
the same pills with .the same hope
the back pain will go away,

I'm raising one arm like a wand
circling the air-the other, braced
against my chest, where stress tightens
breath-and visualizing a circle around me.

But the circle wobbles and who knows
what toxic energies are slipping in
under the line. Then I take vicodin,
pharmaceutical's latest magic pill.

But yesterday lying on the acupuncture's
table with needles in my back
and the smell of herbs circling around,
I was not pierced with Tarot's
Ten of Swords with a black sky hovering
but warm rays from a healing lamp.

I read books on miraculous diets-
raw vegetables, baking soda and rum.
I see soccer moms and grannies
stepping in place while blending
these strange concoctions---and so,
with my kale and parsley, sipping
ALTwater and prune juice, I'm just
a browser in this magic shop journey.

When the evening talk shows come on,
and another celebrity tells of her
no-hope story where the doctor says,
see a Chinese herbalist---I say okay,
I can look like a milk-fed diva.

Though I'm a lapsed Chinese born in the U.S.
I call on the magic shop gods of healing
to break through the dark and beam a light
on the horizon.

Even now, the Eastern halo massaging me
feels like Grandfather Wong reaching
down from his opium cloud to help
the granddaughter he never knew.

Besides, my own arm is getting tired
of circling for answers, and the hands
of time are not mine--

So lying here catching up on years of lost
ancestral imagination may just do the trick
as long as the lamp stays on.