Poem about Nicaragua

Photo taken during revolution

If Nicaragua were a place, it would be a boxing ring.
This place, it’s in your face, it’s exciting and interesting
You want to watch what happens next but at the same time there’s something wrong with that
and you get disgusted with yourself.

 

This poem is written next to my grocery list
I will buy these things at Pali this afternoon
An Avocado, Tomato
Carrots, Corn Flakes
Tortillas, Cheese
Yogurt, and ice cream
 

The boxers that play in the ring are worn out but so driven to win


This poem is brushed up against my keys
This poem was written with a broken pencil
This poem isn’t afraid of getting wet from my water bottle of clean water
This poem does not have order, organization and sense
No simile mocks my subject
In a poem you usually have descriptions with adjectives that are silky, soft, and sensitive.
In this poem, you won’t find eloquent, elusive, imagination
It’s not fair to its readers


Strong and sweating to the finish they fight
Not giving up, even when they are repeatedly beaten down

 
The spectators make bets and sometimes the game is predetermined, corrupted by hunger for money
The boxer knows this, and takes the hits anyway.
 

This poem means something to me


It was written in my own backyard
You see, I am from the United States
I am from me me me take take take
Media consumption, a socialist phobia, and a fat wad of opportunity
I also came from
A house that kept the rain out,
I had a loving father who respected the women in the family
And enough food to live and be healthy


You reader, like the blind man who would hold out his hand on the street, can’t see
And I don’t know if I can properly explain
When you only have a paper and pencil in a place
Where a ten-year-old boy is shot
For his shoes


At the game it’s sweaty, hot and loud
Cheap food is being sold in the allies and aisles,
Trash is scattered on the ground because people have the mentality that someone else will clean it up
or maybe they just don’t care.

 
A 14-year-old girl’s body was found discarded in the sewage after being raped
Someone else will clean it up
 

I don’t want you to TAKE this story,
Like how I sat and took notes on the different women I talked to
I wrote as a pathetic distraction
Forming words that printed on my page
English as a code of translation but still not understanding
Take these words as Braille

 
The government in Nicaragua is like that “referee” in the match, unemotionally making the countdown when the boxer has been knocked down
He’s there watching but not doing anything to stop the violence

 
When I look at the pages that I have scribbled, it reads things like:
Single Mother
4 children
Question: What’s the first thing you think about when you wake up?
Answer: Making breakfast for my kids so I can get them to school on time.Sometimes when she can afford the time to go to the doctor, but she only has enough money to help herself or her children, who is she going to pick?
 

Different House
Single Mother
5 children
Question: What do you wish for your eldest daughter?
She says for her to have an education
But sometimes, for the family, she sends her daughter to work, to contribute, to sell her body, to be a prostitute

 
Even the lighting is similar in the boxing ring to the sun that beats down in Nicaragua,
In the background
There’s a constant unanimous cry from the crowd for a win, for the fight to finally be over


Another House
Another Mother
3 children
She said to me that if her husband had any second alone with her, he would rape her.
Sometimes she doesn't have food to feed her crying child so she gives them glue to sniff to curb the hunger

 
Sometimes I think I am the one in the ring…
 

I left in tears but my body felt more then the downpour
A squirming of my organs, the pumping of my blood and the prospect of my earlier meal going in the reverse direction it went down

 
All I have for you is my words

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