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Field SchoolAfter the earthquake, you seea Biblical swarm of locusts. You are bit sixty four times on both legs by invisible flies that swarm in the sand. The water of the Carribean is always lukewarm and smells of kerosene. The bed in the hotel, every night, is cold and damp, as it fills with tears of the tropical storm leaking through the roof. It is difficult to eat at first, the air is so full of strange flavors, the smell of rotten fruit and the garlic and onion scent of a particular tree. The tunnels beneath the hieroglyphic stairway cave in, the statue of 18 rabbit loses the glyph of his name. When you come back from the beach, the plaza is riddled with bullets. There are blood-stains on the walls and sidewalks. A man from La Entrada was targeted by four assassins, but, in this country, an assassin is anyone who is given an AK47 and a few lempira a day. The "target" escaped into the church, but four townspeople were killed as the gunmen sprayed his getaway. Tonight in Copan Ruinas, someone else is without a child, a mother, a father, a son, it's not magic how things keep disappearing. Each year, it's a little harder to keep the jungle back. In the towns, you see only men, never women. Perhaps the women are all that is left of the ancient Maya, hiding in their houses that are constantly falling down around them, trying to keep out of sight of the gods who stream up by the thousands like disturbed ants out of the ground, devouring everything within reach, a butterfly or two, an insect, a bird that manages to fly away down that pathway where the children of the jaguar are still playing ball with human heads. |
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Issue #11, September, 1999 :
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.