Ken Hada is a fourth generation Oklahoman, descendant of Danish and Hungarian immigrants: Gypsy poets, barn dance aficionados, art lovers, amateur philosophers, wheat farmers, preachers, teachers and common-sense craftsmen.

“These poems, acting as spare parts themselves, go into the making of one smooth-running, powerful engine.”

 - Diane Glancy

Author of Pushing the Bear

Confessions

by Micah Muldowney

 

There is no moon--the colinas of Salina Cruz are too tall, too steep.  

      

 I am tired; tired of hills. Tired of walking. Tired of the smell of burning, of castoffs, of gutter-rubbish. Tired of junk-metal chabolas,1 of dead-end roads.       

 

I follow the rim of the street-lip; discreet—near-invisible in the unlit edges; Close my eyes.       

 

Gather my jacket in close around me, pull it tight; shut it to the curb lamps, to the door-lights, the tapers in the windows—        

 

Shut it to the voices; costermonger voices. Cantina voices. Dog voices:      

 

Shut it to the calls for Matias Romero, for Ixtepec, for Juchitan-tan-tan. Calls of "Ven, Papacita"2          

 

from the crimped putos and night walkers pussyfooting behind their drab maquillaje and jacklit posterns.        

 

He stopped me at the corner:

 

A short man. A swart man; a lank, A-shirt, rag-head man. Chupado 3:         

 

He holds up a hand: the empty one; tatuada with gang signs: Tres Puntos4. Lurches:       

"Help me, for the love of God." he stammers. "Me voy a matar:"5

 

He sits on his heels, rests his face on his cauama,6 on the adobe.          

 

I turn to pass him, pass his ratty piss-reek alley. Drunks always try to touch me, wheeze in my face, cry on my shoulder for money.          

 

He touches my shoulder. "Talk to me, Hombre. talk. Talk! Háblame pues, por el amor de Dios!”7       

 

You are a man of God, no?" Gestures up. I nod.      

 

He blinks hard, falls back a pace— "You must talk . . . forgive me—pero tu, que sabrás?8  My sins . . . I've sinned against God, against projimo?9 Tu sola, Virgen Santísima!"10 Crosses himself.      

 

I don't want to know.     

 

"You must!" Pauses profoundly, extends his finger; "you are hombre de Dios. My sins . . . I killed a man. Two men; one was murder;" he bends over, sobs, bites his knuckles.        

 

 I cannot pass him. He has lain down in the middle of the street.       

 

"What do I do? Tell me . . . how am I forgiven hombre de Dios? Tell me!" I prop him up.        

"Save me hombre de Dios!" He tugs my hand. Begs.        

 

I cannot save him.       

 

"You don't understand:  you didn't feel how the knife entered his neck, opened it . . . you didn't feel his sangre, his blood, how it spilled! How like a cochino!"11 He weeps—sibilates in his throat; slavers on his bleeding knuckles—heaves, wipes.      

 

There is blood on his shirt; he has broken the bottle somehow, cut his palms.      

 

 "And where is his money? I don't have his money! I am too tired and sick to live, too cobarde12 to kill myself."          

 

He is screaming now (not at me)."My crime—you must talk to me—you must absolve it: you are hombre de Dios!"      

 

Now whispering: "Por mi culpa," fist beating his chest, turning little circles;"Por mi propia culpa."13

      

   He burbles incoherently; can’t hear me.

 

I leave him on the curb—desperate, babbling: chewing his fingers—too terrified to confess to the police, to the priest, to abreact: just suffer, self-flagellate; cut himself on the broken glass, Embriagarse 14. . .     

 

 

1. Hovels

2. A prostitute’s come on.

3. Drunk

4. Lit. Three points. A gang whose symbol is three dots tattooed on the hand.

5. I’m going to kill myself.

6. Two liter glass beer bottle.

7. Talk to me, for the love of God!

8. What would you know?

9. Fellow man

10. You only, Virgin most holy! An invocation of the Virgin Mary

11. Pig

12. Coward(ly)

13. Lit. For/through my own blame/fault. Part of the Catholic liturgy

14. Inebriate himself