You died last night.
I saw you shimmer under my floor seven safety window
a spandex ice cube glob.
I thought you had brought me a rucksack stuffed with memories
and I had to make a deal with nostalgia
Here in an MFI university hotel room
with its fireproof door and wall sized pin board.
Your next door neighbour gravely told me
your home looked like the skeleton of a horror movie set
where Mike Myers had turned on every light so no one could hide.
I was ready to mince myself on the reinforced glass,
tumble and melt into blood,
until,
from a two hour long road away,
you flashed fluorescent on a caller ID I didn't recognize
and slurred through the invisible telephone lines,
that mesh the sky,
to tell me I'm your Vagabond Girl.

I'm thinking of you
in this Bat-Barn classroom.
All Concepcion's mini comrades have run home
across the smoldering cane fields
and left me amongst their drying toothbrushes.
I'll sweep out the dry mud dust,
close the elderly soft wood shutters,
eat the bruised mangos and shriveled limes with chili powder
that they brought as gifts this morning.
Did you get my letter about Nadine?
Now, the village eyes are squinting at the sugar seller.
Her espresso syrup eyes still howl
like she has a step mother who makes her clean her teeth with bleach,
like your foster sister did.
I remember when your eyes stopped howling,
and we started to share toothbrushes.

This is for you
from hungry Berkeley,
where the streets are paved with cardboard boxes
and corrugated hands hold out 'Fat Slice Pizza' paper cups
for recognition, not muddy loose cent shrapnel,
or the side of faces.
I saw this postcard in a junk store window.
Put it to your nose,
you can still smell the Blues club dust that made it look sepia.
I watched The Postman Always Rings Twice, like you said.
The shadows pressed into each other
outside a telephone booth
on this card
reminded me of us
in the empty cattle market car park,
black and white film fugitives in spaghetti rain.

From the paint peeling walls of Havana,
who plays like a solo saxophone
to herself
and like a brass band for the tourists.
I've just seen a black man get beaten
by insectile police
because he sings about Africa and Jamaica
in rooms that steps always have to lead down to.
Podgy Italian men are getting hand jobs under the club rum at the cabaret,
and buying the ring finger
of Cuban women my 18 age
so they can dress them up
in mini skirts and lipstick.
I fly to you the day after tomorrow
to tell you
that my brain has become a mountain range of mirrors,
a collage of questions?

You're the flipside of my crumpled, back pocket copy, favourite postcard
The Lawrence Tree, magical vine branches and stars,
as the road rolls out eternally gravel carpet,
or a dead snake's parched tongue,
and dissolves into the sky's burning throat.
We're together in a clutchless humming car
slashing across a landscape that misses the dinosaurs
and weeps at America's war on nomadism.
Radio static and the faint flytrap snap of a camera shutter to
flashback night in the soft Sahara sand on borrowed money,
and a white walled Medina room with heat like a woolen blanket
you couldn't breathe beneath.
You got me to bail water out of the clunky sink,
carry it across the room and chuck it on you
for momentary sighs of relief.
This time you are here in our postcard
writing all over it I love you.

Copyright © By Hannah Wood