Appointment in TJ

They came from Montana, Iowa, Canada,
Non-Hodgkin's lymphona, some leukemia,
Cancers and auto-immune conditions too varied to count,
And all, of course, will have had their fillings replaced
As a matter of course, for all disease comes from the mouth.
Most came every quarter, to cram into the shuttle,
Hard, logical people who know the current price of gold
And cannot afford hope and think only of results:
"My cancer's in remission," "in a year it will be gone,"
"All the pain is on the run."
But another kind of pain
Comes through all their smiling faces: "They can't treat cancer
In the states, all they do is radiate you,"
"The dentist who discovered amalgam's pathologies
Is still in Puerto Vallarta; he was quietly deported,"
"There are many cures for cancer, but there isn't one for greed,"
"They ought to [with a bitter laugh] go back to leeches."

So they board the bus for Baja, the promised land beyond the glares
Of border guards, their vans speed through, past signs that warn
"In Mexico guns are illegal."
On the other side the cars
Are stopped already, and peddlers weave between them with plaster
Cruxifices, fish tacos and guitars. The Tijuana prison
Where everyone's a guard, and even cars are held to streets
With chains around their tires. But the perfume's duty-free
And tequila shots cost pennies, the women all are beautiful
And their men are all insane, and beyond the luge-like roads
And the statues on the rotaries, a carnival of curiosidades
Against a brightly painted backdrop of particle board,
Burros striped like zebras in an open-air trueque
Selling mock ceramic parrots and welded scraps of brass
And panchos and sombreros while the street wears leather and black.

But that's not what anyone who comes here comes for...
For each Carniceria there's six Medical Clinics,
For every Taqueria, about a dozen Pharmacias,
Opticians as far up the hillside as the eye can see,
The tooth as universal symbol across an unbroken barrio,
More crosses on hospitals than on iglesias,
Emergency rooms as commonplace as weeds.

We're going to Rosarita, the sign says 20 kilometro,
We drive through cities within cities where everything that can be
Pulled up is, and what can't be is spraypainted in otherworldly colors
With faces, trees, flowers, machismo lettering,
As if these perfect forms deny the crumbling facades,
The unfinished warehouses stacked with grain, the destartalado
Fish markets, the iron bars on all the windows and doors.
At a stop sign an elderly mendigo
Offers rosary beads and chewing gum with desesperantes posturas.

And then another sign: Rosarita 20 kilometro.
We see colorful clothes flying behind barbed wire,
Hear the people singing to their cellphones, bouncing as they walk
With both hands full (while no one uses the ancient and ubiquitous
TELNAR phones, in case they want collect calls to the past).
I see the meanest looking man I've ever seen delivering latte,
A mesh of tangled metal hanging everywhere without a reason,
Wires like harp strings strung across the roofs.

Rosarita's now 19 kilometro. An endless carretera with its offramps
To the road: Llantera's, Pemex stations, auto parts stores like dusty
Library shelves.
The city is relentless as it moves on many wheels:
Deliveries on skateboards, shopping carts empty and full,
Bicycles with plastic bags hung like fruit from every pipe
Pulling dollies strapped with sofas, planks, or blue water bottles,
Pick-up trucks bursting with day laborers,
Old Bonneville's towing older cars,
Converted carts that promise helados y nieves,
A wheelbarrow full of pistachios,
A vast fruit stand on rollers a man and his son struggle to trundle,
European scooters carrying flowers for a funeral,
Trucks full of milk or propane cannisters,
The only thing not on wheels are sad burros carrying nothing.

The sign for Rosarita's now 27 kilometro.
The smell of salty flesh and laundromats.
Mail is delivered in the holes of chain-link fences.
An imprenta has pasted Sunday papers as its curtains.
We pass caged storefronts that say nothing of what's inside:
"Las Brises," "Rinconcito," "La Moda," "Yerberia".
I even see myself on the street:
A woman with a cigarette in one hand, pen and paper in the other,
Scribbling furiously to catch the chaos of ruido.

We finally arrive at our destination, an office raído
Where the world's leading expert on this particular procedure
Resides. They tell jokes in Spanish as they work their machines.
The waiting room is frío, denegridas, polvorienta.
I see through the slats in the window painted eyes of deepest brown
Staring me down, with pink lids and purple shadows on the throat.
Outside everything is moving. The only thing that stays
In the slow afternoon is the attic vent flowing like wind through
The leaves, silent and continuous.

On the long return, the migrants seem lined up already,
Slouching slowly to the fence with the look of the lost.
In the center of town, a grand arch and giant red, white & green flag;
La Revolución is just for tourists, the driver said.

Back in the land of the Masonic overlords
Where the lines are clean, the billboards sublime,
Where it's chop chop and fret fret all of the time
I'm humbled, and grateful, for they need me here now
More than I ever knew.