“If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.”

—George Bernard Shaw

—inspired by the album cover of Ry Cooder’s Chicken Skin Music (1976)

 

The skeleton with a tan sombrero

copulates with an obese black woman.

There are five houses with broken windows,

behind them a rainbow fence, two mountains.

 

This is a portrait of you together,

the empty houses you have left behind,

the fence between you and the deep river,

the black mountains you escaped to at night.

I still remember you, señor, fondly,

the moribund thief from a shanty town

stalking my family in the dry streets—

who shook the shards of my banjo down

from the red oak tree, as I stood there dazed

behind the house— while at dusk, dumb honkies

licked their numb lips and mariachis played

double-time around the corner, singing:

O La Pistola y El Corazón

O La Pistola y El Corazón.

 

As a child, my blanket shielded me

from dangerous men, or so I thought.

When Señor Mora caressed my feet

I made a prayer to that tattered cloth

to make him leave my room, and he did.

When rebel bandits burst through our door

to threaten my family, I hid

under its soft skin with my sister

until they left the estancia.

On the day the Chimehuin River

flooded its banks, my blanket vanished—

later that night, I would discover

mother whispering by the fireplace,

Señor Mora caressing her face.