Buenas Epocas

                Death is elsewhere.

                         --Ragnar Kjartansson

My mom was the same age as I am right now in this vehicle,

twenty-five in 1979,
a hanging cable car to the Kingdom of The Bird and The Cloud,

My brother Saul is crying on the way up.
These Coney Island dreams come back in '98,
On local tv is a young festive Sofia Vergara-
the reopening of El Teleferico de San Jacinto, but
I've already landed in New York.

That country was so beautiful before the war,

all the sophisticated bridges,
their modernity,
my mom’s usual rant.

She’s holding this food beeper,
unimpressed,
we had this gizmo before the Americans,
Mía Pizza had that airplane technology,
hit the buzzer,
the waiter comes over,
Mijo, we'd be more advanced than Costa Rica if it wasn't for the war.

I can never be my favorite Wong Kar-wai film,
get that motorcycle-
because this is how her first husband died,
she married him in a hippie style wedding dress-
this bridal look seeps well into the '70s cuz

Salvadorans didn't want a new decade!
Everyone noticing more and more of those black vans

mysteriously parking around the city,

I like this one, but you got something in that old Woodstock style?

President Colonel Molina's mustache is shiny under the spotlight,

the Miss Universe Pageant,
the National Gymnasium,
All chorros de humo eleven days later at the university

Molina opening all his gifts from every Miss

We had our own Beatles, but they were from Usulután
I like this song too-kinda like The Doors, but they’re Los Kiriaps.

I'm shocked at this car lecture on Guanaco Rock & Roll,
She spent that era hands raised in a pentecostal church, but
a hitazo is a hitazo

The American reporter would say it started out as a beautiful day,
Tamal air in the square,
Yellow balloons just everywhere.
Were you staring at the stacked rotating bodies of poultry at Pollo Bonanza?

Or were you looking up at that star sculpture at Restaurante Shi Fam,

wondering what far north could be?

All those yellow balloons popping and piling onto the steps

those two and a half to three minutes-
The Metropolitan Cathedral.

I wish I knew where you were during that lunch hour in ’79,

the last song on the Buenas Epocas CD ends in the car,
I start it up from track one again,
Maybe you’ll say more

or maybe we’ll
just listen.