Glass: A Journal of Poetry Volume One Issue Three
It was somewhere in Mexico
Not Durango, with its scorpion market
Where they crawled in glass tanks by the thousands
Sold to tourists, frozen in glass or plastic, sometimes sold alive
Some of the vendors had been stung
Hundreds of times
Until they became immune…
But no, it was not in Durango
Or Zacatecas, the rose city with the statue of Pancho Villa on a hill
overlooking everything...
Galloping on his great black horse, with sombrero
And machete raised high above his garrulous head…
Though it has ceased speaking now, to anyone at all
No, it wasn’t Pancho Villa in Zacatecas
And it was not with the mummies in Guanajuato
Shrunken creatures, with skin like folds of moldering leather
Dried and lifeless as cured jerky
Empty sockets
Yellowing teeth, the color of uncovered bone
But it was in Mexico, somewhere
That summer, when we were driving
And I was still a boy
Somewhere along the dust and dirt of desert roads ...