by Wallace Barker
At the market in Pisac we passed a restaurant
with a guinea pig house in front and our guide told us:
they are happy now but tonight they will be served to tourists for dinner.
We ducked into a native artisan shop
and a shaman in the back offered to cleanse our chakras.
We stood beside one another and closed our eyes
while he anointed our heads with fragrant oil
blew incense smoke into our faces and sounded horns.
I prayed to god that certain mentally ill family members
would be healed and my loved ones who are their
caretakers would be relieved of that burden.
Later, we ate lunch under a thatch roof in
a grassy field of flowers and butterflies.
I left an American $20 bill for a tip.
Back at the hotel, I drank coca tea to soothe
an altitude headache and worked on emails.
I could see the terraced Andes out my window
farmed in that manner for thousands of years.
______
Wallace Barker lives in Austin, Texas. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Post-Pop Lit. His new translation of "Romancero Gitano" by Federico García Lorca is available from Farthest Heaven. His book "Collected Poems 2009-2022" is available from Maximus Books and his debut poetry collection "La Serenissima" is available from Gob Pile Press. More of his work can be found at wallacebarker.com.
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