Scholars say El Salvador fits the cliché of a Latin American country;
broke, pocket-size, but applauded in aristocracy. It’s your typical
banana republic, except there are no bananas, but coffee black & coups d’etats, gangs & fourteen clans. It’s a backyard to big brother.
Studies show 1932 in that country marks the first communist
insurgence in the continent. It is alleged gang loads of indians
with sticks & bottles, with teeth & rocks erupted out of the ravines
& tangled hills like molten lava hissing down the slopes of Izalco.
In 1979 those with means made a case for displacement. I masked
with a faceless face did not want to be disappeared or dead,
so I adapted epistolary writing as my metaphor, but even this leaves
a lot unsaid, said the postmaster, 26% nostalgia, 40% politics,
20% sympathy, 13% academics, 1% I don’t know. Where is the poetry
in this I asked my professor. He said, you’re asking the wrong person.
