After-Music

After-Music

2 a F T e r - M u s i C The mariachis now are skeletons. Fancy hats still shade their skulls and vacant mouths fall open, singing. Here on a slab outside the iron fence, i listen. The bone-lipped trumpet shapes the old tune now, then voices hollow out the words—allá donde vivía. These skeletons are young men, recklessly off key. up north our bones are dour, pinned up for anatomy or bagged in plastic for the coroner. no sugar skulls or fiddles show us how to rattle out the after-music. some of our dead still speak but solo and sorry and seldom from 2 the pelvis. no high-pitched cry. no rancherita. no bony digits quick on the strings. no wired jaws still longing after the tongue is gone. This page intentionally left blank ...