Reflections

 after Gabriel Boric

I.

I remember the protests at La Chile,

students breaking desks and chairs in the courtyard

every September 11th, setting fire to the furniture,

stomping on ashes, dancing round the blaze, howling

wild things enraged by history’s long reach, chanting:

¡concha tu madre!

¡hijo de puta!

¡el pueblo unido jamás será vencido!

No poetry in the chaos or movement

forward—an early lesson in activism

amok, waging war for the sake of war,

vengeance in its purest form.

II.

A former student leader elected president, headlines

declare, the one on the megaphone years earlier,

organizing marches downtown—nation halting

protests Hollywood execs sniff out with great interest

from the comfort of their mansions and yachts,

inspiration for their next work of art.

III.

No hero has ever been elected and movie stars are no

seers, no matter their good looks or lineage.

IV.

Rich people wary of El Pueblo jostling behind scenes

to quelch crowds, clutching their pocketbooks,

as if these are more valuable than the former, directing

police to squeeze out order with pure brute force.

V.

That is the problem, father said: in Chile

oligarchs keep the economy to themselves, self-anointed

owners, absorbed with their investments, wealth

trickling left and right, left and right

down the same generational streams.

VI.                                                                        

I saw you staring at Allende’s bust.

Father cried at the movie, walked away before the ending,

whispering: too many died.

There are no heroes, remember.

Movies are not the same

as children and spies.

Eneida Alcalde’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in literary outlets such as Zone 3, Birdcoat Quarterly, and Magma Poetry. She graduated with an MA in Creative Writing & Literature from Harvard University’s Extension School and is a member of the Macondo Writers Workshop. Read her published pieces at www.eneidaescribe.com.