Spam

by Rafael Jesús González

     Please, the email says,
     do not forward political material;
     it clogs up my mailbox.

In the towns of Aleksinac, Medosevac,
Cacak, in the cities of Nis, Novi Sad,
Belgrade in Kosovo, Serbia, Yugoslavia
the bombs drop (to stop the killing, they say.)
The fleeing & the wounded clog up
the bridges & streets.

     Please send only personal
     or professional mail.

In San Cristobal de las Casas,
in Acteal, in Chiapas, Mexico, the dead
clog up the villages & fields, the refugees
clog up the rectories & naves.

     Poems & good jokes are ok.

In Centla, in the city of Villahermosa,
in Tabasco, Mexico, the disappeared,
the taken, the imprisoned do not
clog up the streets or the polluted farms;
the armed soldiers do.

     I hope you understand.

Except for the bay bridge & the financial
district at certain times, our streets & bridges
are not clogged. We take care our homeless do
not clog our streets, nor our ill the hospitals.

     I do want to hear from you.

April 15 comes with taxes due (for those
bombs in Yugoslavia, those guns in Mexico.)
In Afghanistan women do not clog
the streets; they are killed for showing
their faces, & when I was a boy Spam
was a meat marmalade in square cans
to feed the soldiers.