A largely mind-altered trip to Guerrero resulted in these reflections of a journey taken there in 1989. This appeared in the Correspondence section of Steve LeBlanc and Michael McInnis' 1990 publication "Version 90." (#1 "Death, Static & Interference") alongside work and thoughts by the great Jon Longhi, the ever-dangerous Jeri Cain Rossi, and the wonderous Ira Cohen.
_____________________________
GUERRERO
(first, there is an eagle. An eagle and the busted edge of withered concrete. Withered concrete and banana palms. First, there's the heat. Real heat. And Mexico carries the scent of boiled noodles. It is also brown. Unlike the States which is gray and smells like gasoline. First, there's the scent...)
Zihuatanejo
Magdelena sweeps the sand from the sidewalk The dead father has become just a pair of hands; a little face that passed through her life once a long time ago. He was very real when he was alive. Permanent. But now, fourteen years later, he seems distant. Unreal. Unliving. A whisper of a hint of a shadow in the dark. He is with the birds diving into the water beak first, spearing little fish at will. Or maybe he's with the fish, oblivious to the world above the water until it's too late. Or maybe the fish are the living and the birds are death. Or maybe it's just birds and fish.
Magdelena pours a bucket of water on the sidewalk. Every roll of thunder is a physical manifestation of god. It pounds in the clouds and she crosses herself and kisses her fingertips over and over. God is punishing someone. People lie. If lightning strikes you it's your own fault. No matter what the advances of science can provide, nature will find a way to kill you like a kingfisher.
Magdelena goes inside the shop wiping her hands on her apron, changing the bucket from hand to hand deep in her lethargic, ridiculous isolation, untouched by the passing American sun phantom in Bermuda shorts.
The yellow trucks rumble through the narrow streets as if having emerged from a single point of detonation with their perverse and fatal cargoes, heading toward places hidden from the tourists by the city fathers. There are shacks made of palm branches where people live as mystic visions of indian shamans just around the corner from the place that sells the shirts with armadillos painted on the front. The trucks are moving to places even farther from the chords of memory.
Don't worry about the jimmy marks on the doorknob. The silver is stolen by the iguanas and resold in open booths. Walk away and they will lower the price. Dollars and protoplasm and little else. Ghosts on excursion, 1 2 3.
Above the Playa Quieta
near the garage where the empty cans of oil yawn out of the sand like the bones of ancient dinosaurs men in brown shirts wipe down the sweating grillwork of the waiting yellow trucks and tweak each other's black mustaches or play cards until the phone rings or the wind blows or the sun turns black or blue or green and someone says it's time to go home and for this there are 60 rancid little chickens a year four beers a day three days off every six weeks and all the oysters you can eat every morning at the wharf if the heat doesn't melt your brain by the second year of service into an empty can of oil dressed in a brown shirt with a mustache like the grillwork of a wet yellow truck near the sand by the wharf loaded with rancid little chickens while high above a line of five pelicans known to the Federales fly above the exclusive resort like the catholic priests gleaning the beaches for nude sunbathers to show the governor's guest who is an important man in the oil can business and who loves to look at white women with mustaches who can sing like pelicans while the crows pick the leavings off their plates.
Petacalco
It is all fired with hot iron into the front of the brain. Close the eyes and it remains, water dripping magma and the squeeze of fruit through the portholes of the skull. The crows thieve the leftovers off the plate until Magdelena, in a dream, chases them away with her broom.
I fell from the sky and she is my shadow. Just at the corner of sight. There and not there, but there. And the sky will suck me back up, worm in a bottle.
A Door On The Road To Chilpancingo
Troca Amarilla comes to the door. She is a jet black Mexicana with a deep Irish brogue, spitting green sparks from the tip of her cheap Brazilian cigar. She demands to know the location of the brigade, her sergeant stripes gleaming yellow in the pale moonlight, iridescent as clumps of ginger sunk in a bottle of vinegar.
There will be no rest for the priests of Santa Lucia because the friars of San Cristobal have the nipple of the Baptist, and so the war of relics has resumed. Troca is looking for stragglers, whistle poised in her lips, and knows full well that if the nipple can't be recovered, the priests will have to steal the Moses Molar from the abbey of San Marcos until a trade can be arranged. It is dangerous work, and must all be done without the knowledge of the Pope.
Even now the nuns are cleaning the rifles with oil and wiping each bullet with the juice of red peppers as a crow sounds a shrill war cry in the palms and a cockroach climbs the umbrella to be the lookout.
A lone green coconut, its top eaten out by the multicolored ants, falls at the feet of the Major who is standing knee-deep in the broken brown grass. It is a signal. He waves with his arm and the men on the road sneak off into the trees for cover.
Somewhere over the hills, a flash of light sparks out for just a photographic second. Moments later comes the thick boom from the artillery, bouncing off the water-starved canopy of trees.
And so, by midnight, the yellow trucks will cruise among the bodies, clearing the battlefield so as not to upset the Americans. But at least for now, they sit in quiet rows being wiped dry by men in brown shirts with black mustaches, watched closely by the gliding pelicans near the junk above the Playa Quieta.
Correspondence from Mexico
Correspondence from Mexico
Correspondence from Mexico
A largely mind-altered trip to Guerrero resulted in these reflections of a journey taken there in 1989. This appeared in the Correspondence section of Steve LeBlanc and Michael McInnis' 1990 publication "Version 90." (#1 "Death, Static & Interference") alongside work and thoughts by the great Jon Longhi, the ever-dangerous Jeri Cain Rossi, and the wonderous Ira Cohen.
_____________________________
GUERRERO
(first, there is an eagle. An eagle and the busted edge of withered concrete. Withered concrete and banana palms. First, there's the heat. Real heat. And Mexico carries the scent of boiled noodles. It is also brown. Unlike the States which is gray and smells like gasoline. First, there's the scent...)
Zihuatanejo
Magdelena sweeps the sand from the sidewalk The dead father has become just a pair of hands; a little face that passed through her life once a long time ago. He was very real when he was alive. Permanent. But now, fourteen years later, he seems distant. Unreal. Unliving. A whisper of a hint of a shadow in the dark. He is with the birds diving into the water beak first, spearing little fish at will. Or maybe he's with the fish, oblivious to the world above the water until it's too late. Or maybe the fish are the living and the birds are death. Or maybe it's just birds and fish.
Magdelena pours a bucket of water on the sidewalk. Every roll of thunder is a physical manifestation of god. It pounds in the clouds and she crosses herself and kisses her fingertips over and over. God is punishing someone. People lie. If lightning strikes you it's your own fault. No matter what the advances of science can provide, nature will find a way to kill you like a kingfisher.
Magdelena goes inside the shop wiping her hands on her apron, changing the bucket from hand to hand deep in her lethargic, ridiculous isolation, untouched by the passing American sun phantom in Bermuda shorts.
The yellow trucks rumble through the narrow streets as if having emerged from a single point of detonation with their perverse and fatal cargoes, heading toward places hidden from the tourists by the city fathers. There are shacks made of palm branches where people live as mystic visions of indian shamans just around the corner from the place that sells the shirts with armadillos painted on the front. The trucks are moving to places even farther from the chords of memory.
Don't worry about the jimmy marks on the doorknob. The silver is stolen by the iguanas and resold in open booths. Walk away and they will lower the price. Dollars and protoplasm and little else. Ghosts on excursion, 1 2 3.
Above the Playa Quieta
near the garage where the empty cans of oil yawn out of the sand like the bones of ancient dinosaurs men in brown shirts wipe down the sweating grillwork of the waiting yellow trucks and tweak each other's black mustaches or play cards until the phone rings or the wind blows or the sun turns black or blue or green and someone says it's time to go home and for this there are 60 rancid little chickens a year four beers a day three days off every six weeks and all the oysters you can eat every morning at the wharf if the heat doesn't melt your brain by the second year of service into an empty can of oil dressed in a brown shirt with a mustache like the grillwork of a wet yellow truck near the sand by the wharf loaded with rancid little chickens while high above a line of five pelicans known to the Federales fly above the exclusive resort like the catholic priests gleaning the beaches for nude sunbathers to show the governor's guest who is an important man in the oil can business and who loves to look at white women with mustaches who can sing like pelicans while the crows pick the leavings off their plates.
Petacalco
It is all fired with hot iron into the front of the brain. Close the eyes and it remains, water dripping magma and the squeeze of fruit through the portholes of the skull. The crows thieve the leftovers off the plate until Magdelena, in a dream, chases them away with her broom.
I fell from the sky and she is my shadow. Just at the corner of sight. There and not there, but there. And the sky will suck me back up, worm in a bottle.
A Door On The Road To Chilpancingo
Troca Amarilla comes to the door. She is a jet black Mexicana with a deep Irish brogue, spitting green sparks from the tip of her cheap Brazilian cigar. She demands to know the location of the brigade, her sergeant stripes gleaming yellow in the pale moonlight, iridescent as clumps of ginger sunk in a bottle of vinegar.
There will be no rest for the priests of Santa Lucia because the friars of San Cristobal have the nipple of the Baptist, and so the war of relics has resumed. Troca is looking for stragglers, whistle poised in her lips, and knows full well that if the nipple can't be recovered, the priests will have to steal the Moses Molar from the abbey of San Marcos until a trade can be arranged. It is dangerous work, and must all be done without the knowledge of the Pope.
Even now the nuns are cleaning the rifles with oil and wiping each bullet with the juice of red peppers as a crow sounds a shrill war cry in the palms and a cockroach climbs the umbrella to be the lookout.
A lone green coconut, its top eaten out by the multicolored ants, falls at the feet of the Major who is standing knee-deep in the broken brown grass. It is a signal. He waves with his arm and the men on the road sneak off into the trees for cover.
Somewhere over the hills, a flash of light sparks out for just a photographic second. Moments later comes the thick boom from the artillery, bouncing off the water-starved canopy of trees.
And so, by midnight, the yellow trucks will cruise among the bodies, clearing the battlefield so as not to upset the Americans. But at least for now, they sit in quiet rows being wiped dry by men in brown shirts with black mustaches, watched closely by the gliding pelicans near the junk above the Playa Quieta.
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