In Corumbá

The pousada is a grand old house, with glassless
windows and peeling paint; over
bricked roads my taxi tears
up to it, swerving past motorbikes
hurdling through the darkness.

Brasil meets me at the gate, he does not ask
if I need a room. He takes my backpack and walks
silently up the stairs; He points to a bed
in a laundry-strung dorm:
eight reals.
He sets my backpack down.

He speaks
broken English and I
little Portuguese so we circle, approximate
conversation until, uh, u
sehnor falla espanhol?

Sim!

I need an ATM. I have no reals.
Brasil has a red truck with doors that stick
and he drives me around the sleeping city
looking for the Plus logo; He points out the bus
for the border: ¿lo ves? FRONTIERA
and a good resturante, open late.

I share the room with five others; we queue
for the shower and fall one by one
into sagging twin beds covered
in a pair of sheets only. But it is too hot
for even sheets, too hot to sleep.
A pair of wobbly ceiling fans
whine like jet engines. Boa noite.
boa noite.

The morning sun casts shadows behind the peels
of paint, reveals the haphazard course of the ceiling
fan blades. The house is littered with dusty
sofas, carved parrots, remnants of grandeur.

The bathroom mirror is black except
the very center which reveals the bright
gleam of my sweaty face and suddenly
I see in my place Miss Primrose, my first
grade teacher, her tightly-wound bun,
her complexion so shiny that it appeared
perpetually wet and how I would try
to emulate her, splashing bathwater
on my face.

I wonder where she is now, did she marry,
did her shiny smoothness crease?
It is funny, the undulation of memory,
how and when we remember people.
In three days I will see Brasil again
and for a moment I won’t recognize him.