Brenda Tai Layton
Looking Good
[Dominican Republic, December 2004]
As the wedge of day edges night apart
and rain bruised leaves sprinkle thyme scents
through windows, we drive in streets
like dented wash boards;
pass lines of indistinct faces, locals who seem
like clothes hung on lines by the roadside,
as they wait for insomniac mini vans to cram them
towards the scrams for the day’s jobs.
We drive through towns of music, horns, bells,
accusations of brakes. On through where
villagers muster in circles, in groups on porches.
Where they drape over barbed-wire
fences and drooped shoulders of shrubs,
garments to dry in the sun;
cloth scrubbed with scorch-wood river water,
rubbed on the beat of pebbles,
hung out like hagglers’ wares.
We drive on streets of dented washboards,
see the country of confident citizens refusing
to be unkempt in presentation
of themselves, to themselves or to us.
By the roadside clean clothes await occupation.
Brenda Tai Layton
Page(s) 46
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