Thursday, November 24, 2022: John Grey's "Tijuana Market" and "Today in Finland"

© 2022 marie c lecrivain

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review, and Red Weather. Latest books, “Covert” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Rathalla Review, and Open Ceilings.

Tijuana Market 

So many stalls,

so many Che Guevara tee-shirts,

an occasional benign Christ,

pyramids built of onion and peppers

and a Mariachi band

playing for atmosphere and tips.

Old women smothered in fibers,

their earth-colored rugs

weaved with cochineal fingers,

and so much corn on the cob

soaked with butter,

and DVD’s of masked wrestlers.

Hammocks for the weary,

quetzals for the quick eye,

and serapes the size of blankets,

hats large and exaggerated enough

for tourists to wear

maybe just the once when they get home.

Try the chili grasshopper

or the breakfast burrito,

ride the donkey,

watch the dancers,

click your teeth to their castanets.

Bask in the heat,

sweat with the mob,

stick your head through a hole

while your wife takes a picture:

Fred, the matador de toros,

with one swish of a sword,

slaying a cardboard bull.

Today in Finland

I am in a sauna,

a structure the size

of a hobbit house.

I sit naked on a small bench

before a wood-burning stove.

At two hundred degrees,

forget emotion.

I am strictly my body

and its senses.

I pour water on stones.

Steam hisses like a thousand snakes.

My flesh scalds red,

drips like it’s melting.

Now, I’m this one hundred

and sixty-pound

mass of sweaty blubber,

with a face like a round dish

on which glassy eyes,

bubbly nose and dribbling mouth

have been painted.

I tell you this

to save you the trouble

of imagining it.

© 2022 John Grey