It rained hard in Uzhupud
a good cotton sheet of rain
the grass, trees, birds, nose, limbs, unwind
a three centimeter orchid out of a blanket of cobwebs.
Before the rain the orchid hid like a delicate insect
in the shade of a bright yellow Fresno tree
but now it imitates a spoiled sister
monkey with candy striped apron wings.
Oxygen squeezes through half open
(continuously half open, oh who knows old age)
esophagus of the woman’s aging body
and massages her lungs like poetry.
A bit of rough flesh and rippling muscles
reveal stories no one cares about.
What stories are those? Who are they? Watch out,
she may snip tongues in the afternoon wind.
Her memories play with near edges of music
Angelo Romero is singing a bolero
a silhouette of window frames looks for stability
and words turn to every angle of the edge
while she waits for Manuel and his loud bitch
~it could be as persistent as a bark from the distance
to arrive in his mixto white-green-striped taxi high
on the hillside or at the corner of her property.
Once she accused him of a local robbery
and said, my name is Magdalena Johana Maria
he threw up his hands eyed her sideways
reeked and shook hands
Manuel looks after the old woman now
with his sugar moonshine eyes eyeing
the gun toting neighbor Homero up the hill
twice a day, while the bitch barks guilt over fences.
What if it is rainy or foggy and the breeze kicks in?
Then Magdalena sips cedron and mint with honey
and refrains from cutting the bitch’s lungs
with blunt scissors, like a proper gringa
until the late afternoon winds have gone.
high in the andes 