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Con los muertos: El dia de los muertos, 1992

Kael Moffat

This adobe wall
has held up
thousands of human skulls
topped with candles
and knuckle-size candies
scratched with human names.

Someone's Carlos,
another's Maria
is alive again tonight
because the fishers
have come off the water,
dropped their nets
in the wooden palms of their boats,
cut flowers
empty of light,
and sing loud songs.
Orpheo de los angeles.


An old lady turns to me,
reaches under her cross
to her sunburnt breast,
points at the picture on the grave
of her twelve-year-old daughter
(her twenty-year-old ghost)
and says, "My Consuala
can hear me tonight,
can feel my breath,
and touch my hands that ache for her."