An Alchemy of Words

The Wreck of the Union Salvador

"The Wreck of the Union Salvador"

At low tide, blue heaven descends

         on an orange,

      rusted

                 deck that was

                          once blue, that was

            once blue and white and now

                           lies, her engine room open,

                                             whorishly exposed

                      and raped by waves

                              like tears.

                 She died, dynamite

            forcing her open as if with teeth,

                          throwing her

                                        in flames,

      half of her falling into

                   the sea, half of her

                                                   flying

                                                        in fiery arcs

                                     towards land and

                             I can hear the voices, the Contra rebels saying

              stand back, please

                         stand back.

                                    That is war and this is

                                             a gun and that is a boat,

              (a political boat)

                         and this here is dynamite

and the fishermen all

must have stood there,

            sully but understanding.

                                                                   This is a war and that is

                                                                              the sea and this is a boat

                                                        (a political boat)

                                            and that volcano is El Salvador

                                 and that one is Honduras

                       but this one,

                              this one here

                              is Nicaragua

                                   and this is a war and

                       the death

of a ferry.

˗ˏˋ・。☆.・゜✭・.
AUTHOR'S NOTES
✫・゜・。.・。. ✭

After high school, I spent a year travelling through Latin America on a converted school bus that was older than I was. Starting with a stay in a rundown neighbourhood of Toronto, we drove south through the US, crossed into Mexico at Ciudad Juarez, then on to Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and finally Nicaragua where I wrote this poem (as well as my Broadway-style stage musical, "montepío" - https://www.wattpad.com/1066985485).

I confess, I fell into a tortured love with Latin America and I love her still: her history, her languages, her people, her writers. I discovered that my favourite poetry in the world, filled with flowers, songs, and wrath, was written by the ancient Aztecs, before Cortez crashed the party. See Flowers and Song: Poems of the Aztec People, translated by Kissam and Schmidt: https://www.amazon.com/Flower-UNESCO-Collection-Representative-Works/dp/0856464236/

I also discovered that Latin American history was best understood as passionate mestizo love child, born of death and magic realism on one side of the family, poetry and politics on the other. If you're interested in making sense of it, my best recommendation is to explore the Memory of Fire trilogy by Eduardo Galeano: https://www.amazon.com/Memory-Fire-Trilogy-Genesis-Century-ebook/dp/B00JK55998