Finally.

The Backwards Map

shapeless and stained, how my sister gave the man with three burros
directions, what the girl with the red kerchief around her neck meant

when she smiled and pointed to the broke-down bus, the sky, a boarded-up
gas station, a pile of black gears the size of hands, a no-name country,

the absent smell of gas, the scent of oranges being peeled by sweating
hands, rocky streets with grey felt hats pulled down, eyes so dark

its-good-to-see-you and we're-not-speaking the same black look when lids
peel back, old women on stools selling peeled mangoes in buckets, tying

and retying braids as black as burnt fuel, hips spread like buckets
of rising bread, why the tourists in their go-carts forget what indigo and

come here mean, how commands and pleas fall into disuse, everything
reduced here to a simple statement: the man rode his bike to the river

and the store lacks eggs and peppermint, how, in street children's dreams,
a third language surfaces, multi-hued, prickly, for some the words

are feathered, for some underwater,  how, for my sister, the tongue
is stuck, sleeping under netting, in the heat and muck

_________________

Sorry for the neglect. I had my purse stolen (which takes sooo much time to respond to) and I've been ill. Quite ill.