Norman Bissett
In The Bus Station
A donde vas? he barked,
eyes full of malice,
brimming with undisguised contempt,
his falangista face
chewing a chiclet.
Dressed in a black hijab
and struggling with two outsize suitcases,
she was fat, grandmotherly,
panting and out of breath,
her ankles swollen from the heat.
A donde vas? he sneered,
eyes glittering hatred. Having no Spanish,
she failed to understand.
God knows where she was going.
Only she and Allah knew what she had in her bags.
She motioned along the bus,
tapping her luggages.
Spewing out bile, he shook his head.
La maletera esta completa.
We knew it was not so.
Que suba por detras
y sientatepor detras-
wafting his wrist as if she were a fly.
A kind señora disembarked
and helped her with her load,
leaving the driver stony-faced,
still waging the Reconquista of 1492.
Page(s) 14
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