photo by Joe Pentycofe
Lorca Floats Over Granada at Night Why are you crying? Please don’t cry. Suddenly you twist towards the window, with a startled look. You stare right at me, through me. Now it’s time for you to tour the house. I follow you through all the rooms. You touch the photographs. There’s Manuel. There’s Igor with Salvador. Then you touch the photo of me with my cohorts. Stop crying. I know your destination. Now you smile. You are gentle with the puppets. You know they are fragile. If you could only hear how the kids screamed when the room turned pitch black and the la bruja appeared in a spectral light. Good lord, why such a tortured face tonight? Time to get back home? I’ll help you compose an excuse. You brush something off the piano. You carefully shut the back door. Was that a sigh of relief? I’ll see you to your apartment block tonight. I’ll watch over you. The din of crowd noise can be heard for blocks away, as if there was a football game or a protest in progress. The plaza of your concrete apartment complex is lit with the blazing light of the full moon. Let’s check the time. It’s three am. We say it’s the hour of ghosts. You greet your friends with hugs and kisses. They ask, “Where were you?” You sign that your lips are zipped shut. There’s your mother in black, looking towards you. She gives a fine performance, affecting nonchalance. The bottle of Licor 43, is passed to her. Everyone is sorry for her loss. The drink softens the edges of her evening. Elderly women sit in folding chairs around your grandmother. You run to her. You hug her with teenage urgency. Your Grandmother says, “He lived a good long life, don’t be sad.” So those tears were for your grandfather, not for this poet and his sentimental puppet shows. You meander to your friends and sip from the same bottle as it makes its way through the throng. Young boys are kicking a football against the concrete wall by the old men who are smoking cigarettes and drinking. The men warn they’ll kick their asses if the get hit with the football. How many generations are together in this stark white plaza? Now the two Flamingo players arrive. The one plays the black box while the singer rants about a tragic death. The old men shout, swept up by emotion. Could it be? One of my
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