My aunt says the millennium is at hand.
She strokes my cheek, wants me to believe, be
saved,
reunited "upstairs" when the time
comes,
while on T.V., a modern-day Elmer Gantry
preaches a concoction
of science and myth—anthropomorphic bible-thumping.
It's the tenth anniversary of Jonestown,
Greneda.
I have not received communion since the Vietnam
war.
For this, I will spend an unspecified amount of
time in purgatory,
my aunt says. But there are graver sins I have
committed
which I tell no one. I watch re-runs of Kennedy
shot over and over.
After 25 years, grief unfurls anew and I am ten
years old again.
The sacred volcanos of Peru and Guatemala are
littered with corpses.
In the Peten Itza jungle, near the sacred city of Tikal, saraguato monkeys howl,
making no distinction between exiled guerillas,
and the invading army—
Uzis bought with U.S. dollars. AK-47's. In the
jungle the Cold War continues.
In the ceiba trees scarlet macaws scream warning to thrumming
insects.
Oblivious leaf-cutter ants carve low tunnels
through the underbrush.
I never get used to the guns. In the highlands I
never saw boys or men—
only women and babies waiting under the volcanic
shadows of Atitlán.
On a shining path deep in the Andes, friends
carrying medical supplies
are stopped by leftist Sendero Luminoso terrorists on horseback
who let them go when they answer each question
right.
Having passed the test, they feel reborn. Their
path leads forward still.
Like with Kennedy, I cannot erase or help the
blood
of lawyer Manuel Febres-Flores migrating to the
sea.
My Peruvian friend said don't look, but
it was too late
as we sped off through the Chorillos tunnel to safety.
The TV news fills in the details. He went to
buy a newspaper.
His crime was that he was a good lawyer on the
"wrong" side.
I have committed this to memory, and I have no
words
for bearing witness to the casual departure of
life.
There are no front lines in the jungle, the cordilleras, or here.
The Japanese woman warns me never to sleep
at the foot of the bed, or I will have terrible
dreams.
During this harvest of apocryphal nights, I
learn I have "thin boundaries"
because I dream of snipers in the jungle, and
wake up on the floor
crawling toward the safety of closets. I worry
about borderline
madness but there are those in power who don't
dream. Ever.
Instead, they bring us nightmares. Names of
horses.
Before the attack on Hiroshima, an ex-pilot
boasted
how he dropped warning leaflets written in
English.
He said they were like falling snow, or
"window,"
the metal filaments they used to avoid
electronic surveillance
while flying in enemy space. He said they named
the bombs
and planes after children: Fat Man,
Little Boy, Enola Gay.
I wasn't born yet when this happened
but I keep making origami cranes to heal
something in myself.
There are thin boundaries between water, air,
and space.
Point in time. Crushed beneath the burden of
air, fish drown.
On the swing set, I heard angels striking
matches in dry summer grass.
The Hibakusha, the first to witness bright plasma clouds and
shadow
are nearly all gone now. At the center of a
bird's back Einstein sleeps.
Antichrist arrives in the form of invasion.
When the last condor dies, who will strip it
clean of flesh
and make a quena flute from the feathers of its wings?
1986
rev. 1987
& 1989
