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The Blog Bog
The Mag Rack
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Summer Comes to Santa Rosalía
"...qué le vaya bien..."
an interweave of voices
-ambulante, bank clerk, shoeshine boy-
air so still the phrases wilt
each almost offered smile.
Dogs and birds hunch
panting in the shade.
"Want a ride?" we ask
an old man
crouched beside a road sign
on the highway
coming into town
"No hay de que..."
No reason to...
What difference could it make?
Smelter closed,
asphalt puddles shimmering
beneath rusted girders
and abandoned ore-car rails. A lone
mechanic huddles
in a lean-to's shade,
parts spread out before him
like salvaged goods for sale.
Dusty bougainvillea drapes
two tiers of weathered houses.
Everywhere the insect hum
of motors churning out
refrigerated air. Those without
on porches waiting
...who knows for what?
Night perhaps, a hint of breeze,
dreams of rain to wash away the heat,
endure this day,
tomorrow
and the next.
"Cervesa, s’ les doy,"
a dark-skinned woman slowly turns
her stool behind the counter,
finger raised to signal wait
until commercial break,
the beer so cold
ice crackles in our grasp.
Past the church across the town
a cleaning woman on the service quarters
of the old hotel
leans across her mops
and brooms to smoke a cigarette.
Then stamps it out,
a flare of orange, and moves
(as all must do despite the heat)
gas attendant, water truck,
lethargic hungry gulls;
"that all goes well" on countless lips
--for things will change,
though never quite enough.
Robert Joe Stout___
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Postcard from Mexico
For Ameen Alwan
Grant me asylum-a cove within the mind
that sent the postcard-and I'll pile rocks and shells
to mark the place so we don't lose it. Your handwriting,
broken sticks across the paper, gives me
awkward choices: Look at this zoomorphic buzzard-jar
from the National Museum-is its leer a furtive Pilgrim's turkey
or that damned drunk writing teacher's soul?
After I read it
I tossed it on the Honda's dashboard; as I was driving home
it rose and filled the window with an eerie, green insistence.
I had to hit the brakes, grit my teeth and watch headlights swerve
around and past me, then remove it. What wizardry is this?
When we're together we talk about money
and the kids in your poetry class and the articles I've been writing
and you and your wife argue-crisp retorts that sound like crackers snapping.
Money infiltrates every new connection. Yesterday I replaced a bald
front tire with an odd-sized spare and today reversed them
-the front end shimmied so bad my wife couldn't drive to work.
"And I don't know when I can afford a new set
or pay the house insurance, or Penney's--and what about Christmas?"
At night she escapes into novels (my own abandoned in mid-sentence
years ago)....
The pre-historic buzzard winks
and a voice I attribute to you veers through the years
between us and our years together there in Mexico.
I push our Anglo wives aside, swirl past their outstretched fingers
into a carnival of groping voices, clamoring hands; the Chapultepec trolley
hurtled us past Aztec ruins and women warming their hands
over little lumps of glistening charcoal. Mámacita! the jar-faced
postcard winks. I pull myself back to the table and fireplace
-firm ground from which to watch. It is not the drunken teacher's soul,
but his id--our id. Dreams take us back.
Asylum, I said. A cove within the id, where I can lift
the colors to my tongue and laugh.
What old symbolisms running through you made you choose
this bird-jar as a gift for me? Am I, then, dead? The id
-our Mexico-dips past the grasp of sentience,
implodes within this rasping of account books, social commentary,
unpaid debts. The buzzard-jar cocks its green head;
your eyes gleam darkly through it.
The past we shared uncoils in these dreams. The postcard mirrors
the message I would send. Speak through, not to, me, friend.
Robert Joe Stout___
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My Wife, at the Depths of Depression
Over Chronic Fatigue With Our Friend Catalina
in Despair Over Losing Both Husband and Job
Beneath the dining table light
their eyes, their words,
their faces merged
in one compelling mood.
From my own cupola of light I watched
the woman that I love emerge
from deep inside herself to share
this other woman's hurt.
And felt the forced staccato
of their laugh lurch forth
to duel an opaque force
that roiled them
to a cliff's-edge gasp
beyond their loved ones' reach.
Then throatily retract, shared
shucking off of countless
askings, "Why? Pray God, why me?"
And I looked down, into my book,
glad to see shared misery work
but wishing her emerging were for me.
-
Robert Joe Stout___
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