There's always still a row of shoe- shine boys next to the lottery ticket counter at the market, which your classmate Mario's father used to own. Mario drowned in a swimming accident. Perhaps he's buried in an ocean region where yellow boxfish are holding a secret Yayoi Kusama exhibit, since the afterlife is only another room in a largely unexplored museum. Perhaps his fortune is to look at the moon behind a blue veil of water without being charged the standard entry fee, while we spend all our lonely coins on the dream of a future without chains or jails or for- profit insurance. The shoe-shine boys sit you on a high wooden stool and hand you a copy of the day's newspaper, but you fall asleep. They'll slick the tops of your boots with wax and brush them to a glossy shine while humming salidummay. When you open your eyes, all the windows along the avenue are lit as if with fire. Don't worry, it's only the ancestors brandishing their torches at the apocalypse.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.