The New Normal 2.0 (featuring To Die in Cochabamba)

You realize, of course, that I'd rather be able to go back to the way I was managing this blog before, namely, putting forth my comments and observations and posting links to any on-line publication. But Google improved the format over a year ago, and as a result I can't figure out how to set up the links. So, I'm going to make it possible for me, and I hope simple for you, Gentle Reader. When I get something published, and when it achieves publication, I will post the link and the text of the poem right here, in the post. Where you are reading this. If I actually achieve a thought worth sharing, I'll put that up here too.

Today's post, not a new one, but from an expired link to The Centrifugal Eye, a project of Eve Hanninen, who set it down so she could spend some time with her own work. What an excellent editor she is, reading closely and considering what might improve the poem.

To Die in Cochabamba (I Will Not Die in Paris) 

Cochabamba, green valley at the mountaintop,

umbilical scar high on the equator.

No one dies in Cochabamba.

I will die in Cochabamba.

Cochabamba of eternal spring,

no longest night, no shortest day.

Streams freeze hard after sundown,

winter comes every night in Cochabamba.

 

Cochabamba of bum leg, the fùtbol ploy.

The center herds the ball around rival feet,

threads it down the field on bamboo legs

while fans shout eternal spring in Cochabamba.

 

Cochabamba, hit samba of Carneval.

Close the window, that cochabamba

is getting on my last nerve, I tell the nurse,

but she is busy slipping morphine under my tongue.

She cups my face in her dry hand,

and my eyes, lips, bum leg relax, Ay, mi cochabamba.

 

It seems in Cochabamba everyone knows,

but I don’t understand, I never have.

I am a plane crash in Cochabamba,

aisle lights down the center in the darkness.