Pinata
In the resort town, it’s
late and I leave the nightclub early. In the hotel of stairs and pools, I
change the channels on the television in my pocket of rooms. I find our
favourite Chinese film, only it has Spanish subtitles. I am at a loss. I can
almost imagine what they’re saying because I have seen it before.
Three buildings over,
strangers dance on the rooftop, the music arriving to me later so they all
appear drunk, staggering in lurch apart from the music but together.
Downstairs, behind a door
open to the street, an old woman makes pinatas for parties she will not attend.
She is alone with the torrid heavens of pinks, yellows, and reds floating
above, empty shells waiting. One night can stand in for everything.
Malecon
Along the Malecon, near the playa de los Muertos,
I think of blood. There are terrors in a strange city. Ones the idle grey dog
on the curb can’t smell anymore. On the Malecon, small children climb the
statue of small children climbing. I don’t know how this ends.
These are small carnages. Little dispatches in
the slipping. You are sleeping on your friend’s couch. He is pacing your
condensed apartment thinking about laundry. I am a continent away collecting
the reports, wishing I wouldn’t play my part.
All along the highway to the airport, small fires
are burning. Women in windows cover their mouths and eyes with the hems of
their skirts.
I am nothing in this city. The rooms here like
gaps, holding themselves against the story. There is an itch just under my
ribs. The apex of the bungee leap, before you are torn back.
R. W. Gray is an
award-winning screenwriter and director, and author of two books of short
stories. His most recent book, Entropic, won the prestigious Thomas
Raddall prize for fiction. His poetry has been published in The Broadview
Introduction to Literature, the anthology Seminal and magazines such
as The Malahat Review, The Windsor Review and ARC Poetry
magazine. He is a professor in the Department of English at the University
of New Brunswick.
