"Matins"
This morning’s matins are dream-based, fear-infused,
a first groggy plea not to still be waiting tables,
not to have my teeth break off and spew out of my mouth,
not to be coiled and bound on a precipice, awaiting
the promised superhero. He’s probably been detained—
perhaps stumbling heat-ravaged through the furnace
of lower Texas, or on a South American vacation,
unable to turn his eyes from the glaciers of Patagonia,
cerulean and windswept, terrible. The city of ice
reminds him of another, a city of glass towers
they’d called it, which he’d swooped in to rescue
from gangs and mafias, only to find all the ornithologists
wandering the streets stunned, mute, gathering
the stilled bodies of white-throated sparrows
from the sidewalks. Their shattered anatomies.
A whistle trapped in each throat, the world
that much quieter.
Cold coffee this abandoned morning,
straggling rain, thumbed out sun. Vagrant tongue,
I’ve followed you here, your far-fetched horizons,
your tall tales. Too often you return empty.
O Lord, there are even elegies for the guilted sidewalks,
small laments that throb to be heard, so what
is your reply? Word made feather. Made glacier.
Made flesh—that your eyes are fixed here,
your ears lashed and ragged with the tatters of prayers.
Nonfiction by Courtney Craggett
from "The First Day"
We were travelers, all of us running, running either from or toward – running from a bad economy, family obligations that had become too heavy, religions that were no longer our own; running toward love, adventure, cheaper master’s degrees, cultural enlightenment. And there we found ourselves, bound together in a new culture, in a new language, trying to make sense of everything and find our place in a world that was suddenly much larger than it had ever been before.
There was Caitlin from Boston, never afraid to speak her mind and at first a shock to my Texas-drenched sensibilities. There was Kristin, who said she came to Mexico and felt like she’d found her true nationality. There was Sarah. She wore a brand new engagement ring and was planning for her wedding next summer. There were Cynthia and Nikki, both from Mexico and the US, neither one exactly sure of where she belonged, so both of them here for now. There were others, too – Shannon and Angela and Claritza and Caro and Sebastian. I didn’t know any of them then, but in the year ahead I’d go wedding dress shopping with them, watch three of them get married, attend baby showers for another three, help one down the stairs when she sprained her knee, road trip to Acapulco with a few others, bake cupcakes, make dinners, celebrate holidays, watch movies. But all of that came later.
The air was sharp on that first morning. Back in Texas my family was gearing up for another 105-degree day, but down here, two hours south of Mexico City, the mountains had snow on them and the wind raised goose bumps on my arms. Although my roommate Kay and I had been to the high school a few times, we’d never taken the bus. Up until now school administration had driven us around. Como podemos llegar a La Paz, we asked a few men on the corner of the 31. “How do we get to La Paz?”
Poetry by Mark Wagenaar
excerpt coming soon!
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