Sestina Moreliana

The chicle boy is dirty and small
and knows to smile wide
and tilt his head to the side
just so, like the stray dogs that beg
for scraps beneath your feet as you sit
quietly drinking coffee at the portales.

The cracked stones of the portales
that arch above you are as wrinkled as the small
women who usually sit
still as statues on the wide
pavement, peeking from blue rebozos, begging
for coins, which you slide sideways

into their open palms. It’s hot outside;
it’s hotter at home. At least the portales
offer cool agua de sandia and the laughter of begging
men who whistle for Cata the waitress to bring small
cups of cafe  that they encircle with their wide
hands. Tipping back their hats, they sit

contentedly and ignore the chicle boy who sits
on the curb picking at a scab on the side
of his leg, throwing rocks into the wide
empty gutter. Does he sleep in the portales
in a corner at night under a small
dirty blanket? “I am not begging,”

he says, “like she is begging.”
And he points to the old woman sitting
in that worn out spot in the corner, small
and quiet. “I do business,” he says, close by your side.
So you buy some gum. You know at the portales
that’s how things are done. Along the wide

busy avenidas under the scalloped wide
arches, everyone is begging
for something. Just because you come to the portales
with your pockets full of pesos and can sit
drinking coffee all day at tables side-by-side,
doesn’t mean your needs have grown small.

Nothing about you is small,
not the begging for love nor the wide hollows inside
like portals you cannot cross, but start through only to stop and sit.

Comments

[Jill]

Love this one Neen