VISION FROM THE BUS
On ridges of unfinished flat rooftops
teetering rails and exposed rebar wait
for a next floor to be built whenever.Next door, busy shops, offices, restaurants.
Hard by cathedral porch, a doorway
hangs onto empty air three floors above
that sidewalk where crowds hustle and shove
ignoring whores and drug dealers and cops
who hunt them when traffic doesn't smash
the world to a thousand fragments.On the corner, holy candle cart under
street umbrella that once belonged
to the Hotel del Coronado.Downtown Tijuana, buildings
half alive and packed together, a
quarter comatose, an eighth under
construction, a sixteenth just
plain weird, and a thirty-second
spot that flickers and repeats:West, stairs twist up the hillside"Gimme gringo brain
fries with chile, please."
between walls of little casitas clinging
to their steep adobe stony slopes.On top the hill above its huge metal
frame the discount market lifts
a message toward heaven:- GIGANTE -
Tijuana Gringo | Poems |