Crossing Poem by Fiona Wright

First, the dust cross-pollinates.
Guards in saggy khaki scratch
their noses, spit phlegm
before their stamps rubber
onto our watermarked papers.
The road is thick. Wads of paper money.
Laundry bags,
and swift exchanges,
the litter of planky rickshaws
and the speeding limbs of cobble-chested boys.
They drag past crates of cigarettes, munitions
and pickled pythons, their bulb-like elders
sweep their hands and beam broadly at pink casinos.
Ribby women swagger under gemstones
and rub their tongues over their teeth:
Perhaps there is no law
but human enterprise, the thick illicit
and a price for everything.