~
Mexican Bones
In the photo I’m ten, perhaps, posed in black & white, with a girdle of pie-dough fat,
On a shop-worn burro’s back, a slapstick sombrero above my sun-crinkled, scowling face,
“Tijuana, Mexico” across its upturned brim.
In Uncle Judge’s Bel Air, Bitsy rides out a daughter-father feud over money.
Our mother, careless, cruises T.J. in El Pajaro Blanco, her ’59 T-Bird four-seater,
And a brown face in a passing truck yells, with Latin manners,
“Aiee, Señora!— Make a blinker!” and she does, laughing,
As my dad rides shotgun, forlorn at the roughness,
And, unseen, unheard, Sheila and I, sweating in back, stick like duct-tape
To the naugahyde.
We park and walk.
A man, amid twirling, rainbowed piñatas in his switchblade shop,
Calls to my mother, “Aiee, Señora! Come buy my junk!”
And she does,
And these twinned stories, the “blinker” and the “junk,” are laughed about,
Over highballs, for years to come, by smiling, head-shaking union drones
In our white-bread, tract-house kitchen.
Seven summers pass.
Jerry and I, blatting south in the rusty Rambler, are off to Ensenada,
Feeling reckless and bullion-tough, sleeping rough, scoring OTC Dianabol
In a funky farmacia, and smuggle it north in the heater vent.
Time slips past, that scowl washed away by a ragged line of five-peso beers
Among the chubby dancers in T.J. stripper bars, The Blue Note, or the Green Door,
Hulse and Duffy on the prowl for gringas, while, in a chrome-legged ringside chair,
Kleyn, tongue dangling, debases himself with desperate, nervous girls,
Shoving grimy dollars down their purple satin G-strings,
And Navy flyboys, in from Coronado, drunk as common sailors,
Sell Buicks in the raunchy toilet stalls,
And a gordo cop outside in a scarred, red football helmet,
Guards the cantina from civil disorder and dishonor,
As 12-year-olds lope along the greasy streets,
Hawking green packs of Wrigley’s from pasteboard boxes.
I’m twenty-one, back in Ensenada, spiking Long Bar Singapore Slings
From a hip flask of white lightning, and mariachis strum Granada for a buck until,
In the dry, gray dust of morning, carried out to the V-Dub van, I crouch,
Blowing detritus from fuel lines onto Bulevar Reforma,
As Mike cranks the motor,
And our two L.A. honeys, sober, bored, intolerant,
Watch with gaping yawns.
Undergrad sheepskins framed, Albert and I head south-south-east—Real Mexico!
On a chicken bus that runs dry of diesel on the lizard-strewn road to Mazatlan
And to tourist bullfights in Villa Union, where Marsango, from the rafters,
Cries “Viva la cagata!”, abuelas cursing as senoritas titter in the sombra.
In the quiet evening, Montezuma’s Revenge bends Hulse double, and
Fast Eddie squirts flaming alcohol out a Red Cross syringe,
Roasting cucarachas crispy as they fly.
Estero Beach at Easter, the golden weather, with Sherrie R, us together,
As clean and close as tide-pool ripples, and shrimp, round as baseballs,
Butterflied and barbecued, with beer.
Heaven—it’s a backwater here, swaying to bohemian rhapsodies of Trotskyites,
Of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs, of “Bad Boy Bob” Mitchum toking reefer,
Slow-waltzing with silver screen dollies, cheek-to-cheek with film-noir mollies.
Indian shamans haunt this world, and the Mestizos’ animales thrive in the good years.
I fish Todos Santos now, or the Sea of Cortez, watching from a shadowy bar
The surfers and their sweeties, or the washed-out, redneck motor-heads who
Wear machismo like a badge, sneering at a button-down world just an ex-wife away.
Under a chrome-yellow sun, my hired car has buried its ass in the sand,
But four locals throw a rope, and I’m out of jail free, while they smile, accept pesos,
And give them to the old pescador living under a palapa in his red, rusted Econoline,
Who takes the bills with a slow, spent grin, this Guardian of the Cove,
Where the pangueros beach their boats after a day at sea.
I fish with old men in their pangas, and feel the murderous whack and the mindless zing
Of dorado on the fly, while, miles off, there’s Loreto, rippling in the haze,
A pearly mirage below the sierra.
~
Lance Mason
Lance Mason has taught at UCLA, Otago U. (New Zealand), and Nat. Uni., Natal, of Brasil. He’s been published in 30+ literary journals and anthologies/collections, with two dozen awards and honors. His essay collection A Proficiency in Billiards appeared in 2016, and he is currently pursuing publication of two crime novels. Rugby, cycle-racing, theater, wine, fishing, and forty years living and working overseas have both interfered with and informed Mason’s writing life.