THERE FOR THE ASKING
Now on the jukebox a .Mexican ballad, the waitress,
herself a floor show, sings along, .plates
clatter as the cook
piles them on the counter and shouts
to alert her, the customers chat and the TV jumps
from talk show to mariachi, and the insistent sound
.recedes to white noise:
.mind retreats to its silence
bringing with it
a few things.
UP NORTH DOWN SOUTH
In Mexico Westerns are Northerns.
On the TV wild horses in the northern desert
and a norteņo ballad beneath the titles, the first of which
is the leading lady, "Flor Silvestre,"
"wildwood flower," a world away
from the Carter family's wet mountains. The movie
pretends to tell the life
of a simple place, the folksy priest, the hacendado's family
apart in their wagon, the cowhands frolicking and testing their skills
at a local fiesta. Cut to the narrator, in pancho and a wide
white sombrero, sporting the moustache
of Emiliano Zapata, that heroic paragon. It's a life,
he tells us, where everyone's known, a life that depends
on miraculous luck
or a pair of pistols.
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