The Collector

Everyday
He arrives at 3:00
To this newly rich neighborhood
Not a minute early, not a minute late
His homemade uniform crispy blue in the summer sun
His tricycle tailored perfectly for the vocation
He parks three feet away from the colored bins—
Orange for kitchen, blue for recycle, black for the rest
Slowly he puts on the canvas gloves
His confidence greater than a surgeon
his face calm and solemn as if he were a general
reviewing his soldiers before a battle
He opens the orange lid—a yellow jacket
flies into his face, then flees like a drunk
He laughs, bends over the bin—
His patched pants opening like sunflowers
Cans and bottles are pulled out one by one—
Coke, Sprite, Real Peach Juice, Wahaha Spring—
Red-headed flies moan loudly over the oozing brown
And he wipes the waste—plastic, glass, aluminum—
with equal passion, just like a mother
cleaning the noses of her babies
“How much do they pay you for this job?”
I throw open the window—a question
itching in my throat since I arrived in Beijing
He lays a sparkling can in his cart
So tender as if it were a rose
“I’m a garbage man,” he says
his voice sparkles like the bottles he just cleaned
“My job will never get me a mansion or a car
like this,” he points to the Mercedes parked
outside the villas in the Pear Blossom Garden
“But it fills our rice bowls, sends our son
to a good school. My hands may get
filthy, but my heart is clean
and I sleep like a baby, next to my wife.”
And he laughs, showing
all his teeth, browned
by cheap cigarettes