ELECTION DAY

by Pilar Saavedra-Vela

“Costa Rica’s Boring Elections Are a Model for the World.” —Foreign Policy, February 4, 2022

The two leading candidates to emerge from a large field reflect voters’ concerns about economic malaise and corruption, but there’s little sign of the upheaval seen in other regional elections. Costa Rica’s president will be decided in a runoff  [on April 3] after none of the record twenty-five candidates managed to secure enough votes to win during the February 6 election. —Council on Foreign Relations, February 10, 2022

Distant car horns

blare in three-beat compass,

announcing that voting  

is fully in swing,

like a Sunday party

in Democracy Plaza,

in San José, in all Costa Rica.

 

Bananas still leave here in ships

to the North and Europe.

Still a banana republic,

that pejorative qualifier

which, from northern heights

of civilization, disdained

Central America.

 

But here nobody is rushing

the Congress building

or maiming its guards.

No military parades,

no goosesteps, no gallows,

no guns firing in the air.

It’s a party out there

 

for 25 candidates

who know it’s not certainty

but a prayer

that the people will

let them lead.

Even in pandemic,

it’s a festival out there

 

on a Sunday,

no alcohol allowed,

but lots of flags, a spree

of blue, yellow, red, green

balloons,  

horn-blowing,

sun. 

Pilar Saavedra-Vela has lived in Costa Rica for almost 34 years. Born in Colombia, she grew up in the DC area, to where she returns almost every year. She is a translator and hotel owner who writes poetry since 2006. One of her poems was published in Passager in 2020. 

PHIL OCHS IN SPRING 2021

by David Chorlton

Photo credit: Phoenix Rescue Mission: “Last summer, record-breaking heat took the lives of 494 men and women in Arizona. As a community, we need to step up and reach out to those who may not know how deadly our summer can be.”

Wake up; check for rain; the daily high’s

a body count and rubbing the eyes

won’t move the images away

of yesterday’s encampment

winding around two downtown blocks

in plain sight of the sky.

It’s so hot all

I can do is to pour

this bottle of water over

my legs, and then

another, and

then another. It isn’t even news today

 

with nine semi-automatic victims

in California and

a gunman’s high-capacity rage

recalled by his ex-wife:

I'm going to beat him up, I'm going

to kill the son-of-a-gun;

Sometimes people say

things like that

when they're mad. The bedding is makeshift

on Eleventh Avenue, the clothing

T-shirt bright,

and blankets soften

the pavement in varying shades

of poverty. Sometimes a face

floats out from among

the collage of nylon and humanity:

remember it. Remember just

this one on behalf of them all. Remember

the song: And there but for fortune,

may go you

or go  I

 

David Chorlton is a transplanted European, who has lived in Phoenix since 1978. His poems often reflect his affection for the natural world, as well as occasional bewilderment at aspects of human behavior. A new book, Unmapped Worlds, featuring older poems that had suffered neglect, is out from FutureCycle Press. He recently took up watercoloring again, after twenty dry years.