our reality tour in nicaragua

And our heads stopped bopping as much on the windowsill ridges of the bus, as the dirt road smoothened into asphalt. We made a pit stop at the On-the-Go gas station and walked out casually of the leeched on depaneur, licking the inside lip of cheesy chip-filled fingernails. Then we turned the curb once boarded on the safari bus, past bales of Twinkie wrappings rolling into mandarin hides. This is the Nica-dump. A rivulet of shattered bottle shards slices through the plastic bags as unfolding grass and pasture. Then it was if we, with moth-eaten cheeks, billowed into that ashtray and let that plume engorge like a dry ocean swell. A boy whose arm had been dipped in crude oil grins and talks-up the junkyard giant, who sports a red cap that glowers like barking makeup stained onto an old woman. Now an emaciated horse is sneezed into the hearth, like a blood-run booger. A man as a blind bull elephant trudges behind the waggling bus rump with a recyclable heap slung over his shoulder. Those supposed eagles from far off waver into vultures. Squadrons of frayed eyelashes sweep in from the North. The horizon is one drawn out huff.

Tykes take communion on a marooned bust tractor and toss about a calf bone. Variegated pockets of men weave themselves through the trash to pick out corner store leftovers and siphon exhaust into jars. A cow burps. The air is sour with white ash and plastic. Syringes poke-out as frequent as Montreal church spires. Ink runs beneath a splash of bus tire, a touch of dead dog. The eath is on fire like an exposed wound. We crane our gaping camera lenses to sip then swallow that pong. Desolate as a Sandals Resort. Cemetery for mall food courts.

The bus ambles through a canyon of plastic bags and stacked–on torn pages of encyclopedias. We disembark, a white hand muffles sound, feather of fog licks our lips in an inhale, thirsty snow. The bus windows had been tinted, now all is rubbed out and effaced. Naked toddlers scramble up to our ankles and bloom then scamper away as mice from an opening garage door. A boy clacks his toy together; two metal balls at the ends of an adjoining string, like an applauding vulture, a metronome marking time.