Walking El Pulguero

Walking at El Pulguero,

a tarp shines

next to the dog track.

The dog track

a bowl similar to the Colosseum,

but with steel poles

subdividing the voyeurs

and attending bidders,

tickets yellow

and flapping in their hands.

Greyhounds on the billboards    ...    

I walk

under the stands.

Bracelets in a jumble

under the black-

marker-scribbled

advertisement brown board.

It exemplifies

the innocent

rebuttal to being cultured

by my particular country — 

the country of my birth,

though not quite my teaching.

The Cuba of the womb,

of the in-walking-distance-

of-the-beach land

in my memory, with shouts

beside our houses

at the corner belonging

to the distribution agency.

Fruits, mangoes, milk,

soy beef, when that traveled

our way, divided

and partitioned by an old

minibus with a man

in an apron and a smudged

baby blue shirt.

I remember soda bottles

being carried off

up our streets, but by who

I don’t remember.

Too vintage a memory

to properly retell.

Orangey glued to the burn

of sunset on time

that young inside — 

I as well draw from that

very same exclusion,

a pleasure from this participating

memory. My childhood was

a happy one, albeit

the pangs existed, sharp

like a battery, violent,

sorrowful, but elastic,

coming back at night home,

be it dark inside the house.

This indictment,

the personal exclusion goes

timid up my skin and neck.

            At the Pulguero

            or not, I’ll find

something to bother about.

It is that time, turbulent

and worrisome until later.

It is just not only this place.

And so I reap

             from the crystalline sky,

             the mangled trees,

             the faux marble and jet

             furniture with gold

             filigree forming a subtle

             Chinese dragon what I can.

The gold iron floor lamps.

The off-brand running shoes — 

Fila, but not really.

Always apart from what

includes me. Vaguely

includes me, is chummy enough,

falling out of the tether

when more incisive probing

corners along.

And so in my cooperation-

less demeanor, I shuffle

further into the flea market,

never benefitting

from the seductive resignation

of allowing everything

a true potential buying power.

 

The baby marmoset gurgles

when belly-rubbed.

Deserted by its mother,

the video lector tells us.

The YouTube bubble

incarnadine in the corner.

A hibiscus, a bee dropping

from its flight.

One dreams it could be

okay to keep the little monkey

for an alarm clock

in the a.m.

           A gang of marmosets

           intertwines among the branches.

           The ground heaves an ash coloring.

           I bogey my apprehensions

           on the little primates flinging.

           Bug-eyed, I read

           their spastic jerking

           as uncohesive

           with my stock of reality.

 

The stony wheel

gurgling in its solar

pickling. Moss

underhand, the water

running its cataracts

of limpid murk.

The wheel has cracks

in the stony center.

 

A frittata offered

to us by a resident.

He’s a culinary student.

It was surplus practice.

And oats on the bread

loaves also in the offer.

He’s a kind gentleman,

toughened by who knows

what. He’s staying here

at the shelter and

I’m too coward to ask

about his life.

Like a scouter of fumy

          billows,

we all happen upon

the hits which we must

report to someone.

And god knows how they’ll

take it.

 

I listen in

on the praxis applied

to the nexus

in accelerating,

intimate make-out

fondling.

I feel it with every

go at the mouth

and lips, teeth

testing their courtship

at submittal,

effusive biting.

 

The phone

shelly,

an onyx coat

          warm

in the jacket

pocket.

A regulator’s annual

finish

like a yearling

passerine

flickering

on the computer

          screen.