The day we learn, on the evening news,
how the senator returning from exile
in America is gunned down on the tarmac
just after exiting the plane, I wait
for a taxi to take me to the hospital.
A fever swells in my blood and a torch
burns through the high grass springing
up in my lungs, in my head. Doctors
tap and listen, then set me up
with drips and needles. There’s a TV
on the wall there too, and from time
to time nurses turn their heads:
the senator’s widow refuses to have
his mangled face and bloodied corpse
cleaned up— mottled red all over
the front of his white jacket. I dream
of fractured skulls and assassins perched
on every lamp post along the boulevard.
For three days I languish before I cough up
everything in my lungs and the haze
in my head starts to clear. Meantime,
talk grows about a coming revolution;
and the ailing dictator trapped in his
mansion, hooked up to dialysis machines.