Among Schoolchildren
The one-story houses were painted aqua, violet, orange, pistachio. I spoke to the taxi driver in broken Spanish. I was becoming a priest, I told him, God willing—Soy un sacerdote (the tense wrong, the article unnecessary, the r rolled too strong)— as we drove over ruts, pot holes, and alongside hungry dogs. Much of the taxi’s interior had been removed. Time slowed that summer in San Pedro Sula. Around the rotary, legless men shook their tambourines, epileptics convulsed, and the blind tapped their sticks READ MORE >>
Eclogues
i. That summer of rain I was a seminarian and visited the Osborn State Correctional Facility. Metal gates opened, closed, like legs crossed and uncrossed. On the mental health ward, behind a small meshed window, a naked man, wrapped in a bed sheet, posed like Constantine crossing the Milvian Bridge. Men hummed in their cells, sticky, strong from barbells. The men had black, brown and white skin, many covered with intricate tattoos like road maps. One seminarian collapsed and was taken to the READ MORE >>
