Killing Time (Orizaba, Mexico)

A girl who carries a tray of envelopes
parades down a cobbled avenue
                                  leading to a statue:
a fisherman kneeling, holding
a fish in its fist, its other hand stretched
across a pool shimmering with coins,
                                                      scales
the fish has shed.
A woman in a tattered blouse
steps into the pool. In the distance
                                        church bells peal.
Children drop like rope from trees,
join the lunch crowd gathering
around the pool to listen
                    to the woman read
the lines of the statue’s palm…
Father & I, hand-in-hand,
wander the plaza of his hometown.
His grip weak, arthritic.
                    We stroll by a boy napping
beneath a tree. Suspended
by wire, chickens sway from a branch.
Feathers litter the grass, sift
toward the head of the boy
as if he were dreaming
                                    of snow.
Father stops, questions
an old man on a bench. Suddenly,
the thrum of poker cards shuffling.
A man in a yellow straw hat spins past us
                    on a bicycle:
a Joker thumbing
the spokes of the back wheel.
The old man laughs.
I reach to slide his teeth across his gums,
                   the beads of an abacus.
Father grabs my wrist…
Small mounds of cobblestone,
smashed pomegranates, in the grass;
                                our path narrowing
as it winds through a strand
of trees. Pigeons lift
from a maple, scatter,
linen torn mid-air. We stumble
upon a snow-cone vendor
                    scraping a block of ice.
Syrup bottles line his cart:
purple, orange, blue, red—
sunlit mosaic glass.
The glint of his silver ice-scrapper
                                                intensifies,
vaults to the fresh-cut grass
like electricity. I ask for watermelon…
There goes the girl carrying
a tray of envelopes!
Ribbon in her braids, blue helixes.
                   Her sandals kick up
the crimson of the cobblestone, like dirt…
The green awning of store-fronts.
A barber shop sign, several letters
faded beyond recognition.
                   Father glances
at the sign, his memory filling in
the missing script, & finds no flaw at all.
On a street corner, a boy with the face
of a beaver stacks unlabeled
                                        tin cans
into a pyramid, at its base
he places scribbled cardboard:
ten pesos for a canned surprise!
The woman in the tattered blouse
                                  sits at a booth:
Tarot cards, a crystal ball.
People in line wait
to have their future revealed.
                   The girl among them.
I want to shout out to her No!
but my throat is dry. My lips
sticky, unable to part as if
I’d licked every envelope on her tray.

for Mireya