"Never again will a single story be told as if it is the only one." ~ John Berger 1 It's possible to see the underlying geography once you find a corner that frays against touch— Under the PLU of Red Delicious apples, under their waxed skins in crates at the PX market— On streetcorners where shoe-shine boys snapped their cotton rags sharp as any chamois— Though I admit it was lost on me then why my father wanted to point out, when he went for a haircut, the Koken barber chairs with reclining backs and porcelain armrests, shipped all the way from St. Louis, MO in the 1900s (the year of manufacture engraved on the iron trestle); or how it happened that his best friend Don Alfredo lived among us, cutting and lighting cigars as he worked in the cave of his basement office at Sky View Restaurant and Mezzanine. Look, we are not the dregs of empire. We know a roast beef sandwich or a hamburger is not as good as lengua or a whole pig skewered over a fire. We know a pearl or piece of ore grifted from these hills, despite their shine suddenly withheld from us.
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