Notes from the White City

1

Broken shards of glass

are embedded in fences.

Dogs shrink inside of their

weather-wrinkled skin

and wash away in gray.

I swallow my eyes thinking

about the bright blue water

in the neighborhood cenote

hidden like a dark turquoise

jewel caught in the teeth

of the jungle—a bluing

dimension hollowed into

the earth for us to find

and drown our tangled bones.

2

I take pictures of the colorful buildings

because they remind me of pastels on an

artist’s worktable. The locals know I’m

not from here and their jagged stares let

me know that I’m right. My brown is a

different brown compared to theirs even

though we look the same. That’s why my

voice feels bleached in the sticky air and

my tongue feels like a wet bullet jammed

in the curved chamber of my throat.

3

On our way to a bus station,

we stop inside an indoor mercado

and I watch a man strike a large

rat in the head repeatedly with a

stick as men around him laugh

at its twitching body. Then one

of them flings it at a group of girls

sitting nearby as they scream and

scatter away. As if analyzing a

bad dream, I can’t decide if the rat

is supposed to represent my

depression, or my will to live.

4

My grandmother has to translate Spanish

for me as we watch fireflies flickering

chartreuse on the lawn in front of a step

pyramid with night falling into obsidian.

But I can’t feel the gods burning off me

like rainwater into steam. I can only count

the changing colors of death’s ancient plumage.