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IN SEARCH OF MARIACHIS
david shumate
When our lives grow unbearably dull, we load up the car and go in search
of mariachis. Sometimes we drive a thousand miles before we come across
a group dressed in those fancy black and silver suits strumming their
guitars out in some parking lot or beneath a wedding tent. We listen to
their ballads and laments and are restored. Other times we get all the way
to the coast without seeing a single one. We ask surfers. Hot dog vendors.
Young women in skimpy bathing suits. We hire a taxi and scour the
streets. The bars and restaurants. We check into an old hotel where
mariachis might be likely to sleep but find none on the premises. The next
day we travel south. When the guards at the border ask why we’ve come,
we tell them we want to see if their country is as beautiful as people say.
They sense we’re holding back from them. So they lean in through the car
window, and lift their sunglasses to get a better look.
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LA PETITE ZINE 24 · EMOTIONAL RESCUE
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David Shumate is the author of HIGH WATER MARK (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004), winner of the 2003 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, and THE FLOATING BRIDGE (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008.) His poetry has appeared widely in literary journals and has been anthologized in THE WRITER'S ALMANAC, GOOD POEMS FOR HARD TIMES and THE BEST AMERICAN POETRY 2007. He is the recipient of a 2009 NEA Poetry Fellowship. He teaches at Marian University in Indianapolis and lives in Zionsville, Indiana.
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