Fushigi na Chicharron

(for Sergio Mondragón)

1.

The body's hidden face
removed of its excesses
is cooked into a codex
that reads:          
this little piggy went to market            
this little piggy piled high
illuminates
what's meant by surface.
 
Everywhere a nation awaits, 
a cardboard raft
soaks through. Everywhere is
a drink of water                                                                            
swimming with the dead:
 
Leagues that can't be reached 
or spoken.
 
2.

A man in the plaza 
sweats beneath
the synthetic hide 
of historical sacrifice
and does a dance
making tourists 
in t-shirts
feel
so alive.
 
 
Far north 
an altar will be built
for the seamstress
forgotten in piecing
such garments.

3.

The question, as we sit 
by the grill, becomes:
What is the real animal 
between us?
 
What skin do we stretch,
scrape and tension with
our desire 
for expansion? For books
that leap like bodies
not our own?
 
So we can never end
with more or less
than this:   What
does it mean to start here, 
with a taco de chicharrón,
as if to say "fushigi na en"
the encounter and consumption of skin
launches every ship?

"Fushigi na en" is related to the Japanese concept of fate or destiny—i.e., when two people are bound to meet or feel a connection upon meeting. Chicharrón is fried pork rind.