The Bad Water

More of the same.

A Mexican artist designed his tapestry the color


of freshly husked corn. The near-photographic


replication of a Wal-Mart receipt�"I don’t


speak Spanish, but words like Xtra Crunch,


Trojan, those I know how to say with and


without an accent. My Spanish would sound


like I were mocking ethnic rancheros, so


I speak like an American with a cocky slur. 



(My ex girlfriend from Lima never let me hit that,


but she always made me watch telenovelas with


her mother�"an illegal immigrant who thought


I was handsome as God until I grew my hair


out like Roberto Bolaño on a bad day in the 70s.


I wish them well now, I really do, both of them.) 



I thought that I might compose a poem


pieced together by torn-up receipts that


homely, overworked women threw away, that got trapped


in the brackets holding wheels barely to shopping


carts. I might shape it like the plume of a jellyfish.


The balloon of the sea, who stings like acid at


just touch. I would likely sting at touch 
if I were blind 

and if I whipped lifelessly through Atlantic


waters. In the bad waters where shadows slide like 


angler wraiths. Where an old man’s American shoes 


took sips of air before they drank themselves
to death.



La Malagua. The Bad Water. Where else might


the torn-up rags of a shopping receipt float?


Perhaps they cannot breed in salt water,

but only water made salty from the spit


of rude children. There is a collection of


sweat on their upper lips. They suck it 


down and then they spit onto a receipt,


huddling over the helpless slick sheet in a


Wal-Mart parking lot. Target practice for 


n*****s and navels. 



And my jellyfish poems will burst and


bare a thousand jellyfish syllables. 


La Malagua’s paper children. They will


die because they sting only the heart.



This is folklore for a culture that lived


for less than a single generation.