Seeing a sign for a gas station 16 miles off
is like anticipating a trip to New York.
Everything bent west from hurricane winds,
a rare radio tower, a flutter of starlings.
Sun-sick, still going over a week in late May
when all I wanted was a silent treatment to stick.
The glum, clipped phonecalls and a breakfast
I couldn’t entirely sit through. I blamed the eggs.
The gas station, of course, was just a gas station:
trucker-sized coffee, bags of corn chips
and local papers only 14 pages long. I still check
my cellphone for texts, open to new scapegoats.
2000 miles from home. Dwarf juniper, mesquite,
and transplanted palms. The Romans advised
to never argue with the sun; I tried to not talk,
and prayed my eyes would survive the Texas light.
Discount shoes and Hannah Montana hand bags,
Marlboro lights in a hundred degree heat.
A border patrol hydrofoil combs the Rio Grande
looking for determined swimmers.
Mayoreo y menudeo. More and less.
Easy to get into Mexico, hard to get
into the U.S., impossible to escape one’s self,
expensive to rent a car and fly out of Houston.
I had planned to smile the whole week,
assume dolor was a Montreal flu I got over,
but picking over silver wrestlers’ masks,
toy guitars and tamarind candy, the flu was back.
Impossible to look at a window without someone
asking if you’re looking for drugs or a prostitute.
The moon is red at night, low to the river; never
confused with the sun, ignorant of boundaries.
The road begins to blur; the Motel 6’s
and Whattaburgers, the soporific effect
of air conditioned rooms. Huisachillo,
acacia, cotton fields and red buckeye.
I had a dream I saw Queenie again, her hair
dyed blonde and her boyfriend unhappily fat.
Things change in their world, not in mine;
"You can all go to hell, I’m going to Texas."
To shake things, I took two-step lessons
at the Broken Spoke. My dance teacher,
Dawn, paced me through "Stars Over Texas."
I told Dawn there’s no good songs about Canada.
A Holiday Inn by a lake. Fancy! As I lay
down again, sunburnt and overfed,
I could hear Queenie reminding me Dean Martin’s
"Weekend in Canada" is actually pretty good.
Tortilla soup, pappas con limon,
Shiner’s bock ale. I wrote postcards
in a Mexican restaurant just by the highway.
"You can really taste the manteca."
She had a kind of nasty scar on her forehead,
but she had a car and I was in Fort Worth
and drunk. "I’ll drive you into Dallas," she said;
"but in the morning you have to drive me back."
I bought even more postcards at the museum
next afternoon. "I don’t even believe you’re
from Quebec!" she laughed, showing no sign
of wanting that drive back anytime soon.
A steak dinner which I put on Visa,
calf fries as appetizer. "Where’d you get
that scar?" I finally asked. "Where’d you get
your mouth?" she said, finishing her plate.
Approaching a sun-bleached post past Boca Chica,
a month after Appomattox, perhaps spurred
by a Colonel’s political ambition, 118 Union soldiers
were taken out by Confederate regulars.
It would be gross to compare my recent losses to such
folly. Unlike the soldiers who lost the last measure
of their devotion in that white-lit cane and river weed,
I have known my war was over for at least 10 months.
More apt to compare my fight to a lonely senior
unto a telemarketer, still confused as to why
a "free vacation" needs two credit card numbers.
Humiliation is hard to outflank, once dug in.
The river road, country radio, chicharonnes,
past shrimp boats and a handpainted sign for
"Camaron coktal." Stopped by border patrol,
"We're just a tourists, officer. War buffs!"
