Miriam Sagan: 138 SANCHEZ DE TAGLE, MORELIA, MEXICO

The apartment was charming if eccentric. An interior balcony of the apartment above actually obtruded into ours. The enclosed courtyard between the bedrooms and the bathroom leaked whenever it rained. It housed the balcony where our neighbors chatted and hung laundry. Outside was inside.

why do I see it
as if in a dream
that funky motel
on the Navajo Rez
at dusk?

I went out in a lull in the downpour, careful on the wet paving stones, to the Artesanos to buy a pottery pineapple. There were huge ones, almost as tall as me, with elaborate spires in black and green glaze like the minarets of a city or an enormous anti-wedding cake. I bought a small one I could carry home in my purse.

even
in a foreign city
I feel close to them—
other people walking
with canes

I hope to remember it always, the potted thorn tree on the roof patio where I smoked a rare cigarette, a velvety moth against the stucco, dogs barking, a garbage truck whistling like a bottle rocket.

propane leak,
apartment of bad drains,
from the street
faint music drifts away
in the opposite direction
.

.
by Miriam Sagan
Santa Fe, New Mexico