‘Mexican Sestina’ and Other Poetry by Geoffrey Smagacz

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Mexican Sestina

Perhaps I left because I got too bored,
and no one could put sense in my thick head,
or talk me out of trekking to the beach
by reading newsclips of prolific death
by drug cartels or government. Not one
could change my plans to move to Mexico.

I drove from coast to coast in Mexico;
Xalapa was OK, but Tepic bored
me, so did Puebla. Then I found the one:
Zihuatanejo got into my head.
I hadn’t heard of any rampant death,
and it had several miles of sandy beach.

But there were crocodiles on the beach
sometimes, and everyone in Mexico
had watched the evening news about the death
of this Canadian man whose spine was bored
through by a croc’s sharp teeth, but left his head
to bob around. I was the only one

on April 4, 2021,
I guess, who hadn’t heard it. Yet the beach
was fun. One day, while sitting on the head—
off bathroom tiles handmade in Mexico—
there echoed gunshots from a pistol bored
for one intent, for causing someone’s death.

The news account next day detailed a death
by two armed men at 12:15, with one
shot that had hit his neck, another bored
a hole straight through his skull. Back to the beach
I’ll go, Zihuatanejo, Mexico,
to soak in crystal waters to my head.

While I was swimming, someone stole the head
gasket which led to my car engine’s death
somewhere around Mirador, Mexico,
an ideal spot for failure, offering one
the most breathtaking vistas of the beach,
which got me thinking: here I’m never bored.

You won’t be bored if you come visit. Head
down if you like the beach and don’t fear death.
My Mexico will welcome every one.

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A Dream and Its Interpretation

Last night I had a dream within a dream,
frightening enough that I remember it
because in utter darkness someone lit
a sudden flame, revealing in its beam
a silhouette, a cigarette, a stream
of smoke, arising from the smoldering bit.
What else but close my eyes in fear and sit
while there still burned the imprint of the gleam?
Yet in this dream, somehow I fell asleep
and dreamt of flipping pages in a book,
and on each leaf were photographs of those
long dead; face after face of each drawn deep
from my mind’s tomb. The stranger I mistook
for fear is death, and it is always close.

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Geoffrey Smagacz writes mostly from Mexico. His rhymed and metered poetry has been published in various literary magazines and e-zines, including 14 by 14 and Dappled Things. His murder mystery, Reportedly Murdered (Wipf and Stock), is now available through online venues. A collection of his fiction, published under the title of A Waste of Shame and Other Sad Tales of the Appalachian Foothills (Wiseblood Books, 2013), won the 2014 Independent Publisher gold medal for Best Mid-Atlantic Regional Fiction.