Riding a Chiva in Cartagena
The neon tubes shade
our skin a palpable green
while the back of your neck
is wet with salt;
is there anything more satisfyingly sufferable
than humid air?
All I mind are sex and death
as we enter the bus
and we’re off!
En una chiva
really
is how the Greeks should rewrite their myth
of the soul and its crossing over
I think
Homer, you blind fool, lead your people to modernity!
and pave your way into Hades instead
and take all the coins you’ve wasted resting on heads
and count them in your palm like a beggar with change
because chivas are cheap
I’d imagine
what soul wouldn’t rather crossover
with drinking and dancing
and drinking and dancing
while old men sing along with the rhythmic scratching
of sticks
and drumming of drums
while passengers drink coke and rum
and thumb the hands of someone they just met;
a bus rumbling with celebration alongside the dreaded river of Styx,
por que aqui en Colombia
vivimos!
And Charon? If that old bag of bones
refuses to drive
I know of a guy --- Chucho
big and strong
who’d take the job
if the money was right
he’ll keep the bus roaring
smiling all the way
toothpick in grin
all day and night
zipping past traffic
and running all the red lights!
Man I tell you
he’ll keep the bus swerving
all day and all night
cantando y cantando
as you crossover
bottle in hand singing
praise to the air
and to this beautiful life;
Ay,
he’d scream
que bonita
es esta vida!
Peru
I would never want to die in Peru,
I think to myself as I chew chunks
of beef tomato (and
purple onion of course)
our guide says eating guinea pig was also
learned from the Inca whose bodies have made
good sediment for constructing the government buildings and
soccer stadiums and people mind little it seems
the contorted limbs of
the past that just
jut out at you as you pass through
the streets asking for change in fact some
find it a decent living for instance the
young girls who sprout from the grass covered
in dirt like russet
potatoes outside a church
on the outskirts of Cusco or the women
buried to their necks in mud in Yungay
Please they cry we can feel our children
tickling our toes while some here are just
mad obsessed with currency
a scar left by
the Spanish fortunately for you the fat police
officer says admitting he does in fact accept
bribes so we pay our way out of
prison and there’s the sun— there seems to
be a damn fascination
with the sun among
the people here who make a festival just
like their kings one day it will fall
from the sky they sing and until then
are content with what they can find rummaging
through the hills placing
ears to stone in the hope they hear
something once missed or
simply something new
Days pass
Days pass
without rain
and leave the tree
in the field
the writer
when abandoned
has only
the same
and the taste
of unbrushed teeth
*
rain and words
where all and is
is born
slushed together
the dirt puddles to mud
an image
which gives life
to the poem
*
the roots
of a tree dig
beneath its body
my fingers
mindlessly
thumb pages
*
no matter how you try
it will never be the same
go now and live
Andrew Navarro is a current MFA student at the UCR Palm Desert Low Residency program and a history teacher. He live in Southern California with his wife and two daughters.
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