After Camino Real

Her mask    is made of wet papier-mâché,

and every day     she laughs at us,

her half-dead people:

 

trailer trash women with origami eyes       gazing out of dirty windows �"

handymen,     skin more grease than flesh,    pressing naked

against their unloving     and unloved wives �"

 

(brown cockroaches    ground into shag carpet,

the twitch of their legs    the lone mark of time)

 

She is her people’s one tree,

growing massive in the baked dirt field

where our few children   would play

if they knew  how to know the others.

 

so to the enviable living:

open your mouth as wide as you can!

the laughter you conjure is all you have

and keep your eyes   simple

 

dance  do drugs  feel an unbelievable mirth

you do not stare through cloudy glass  like us

finding little   left with less

 

at the very edge of the earth.

 

I can’t make my soul be seen �" her pulpy mask is here to stay.