by Jeff Schiff.
Tucked now between a dog park
and bazars the province of Chinese expats
in a grove of peppery Seville orange
the predictable Andalusian suspects
Garcia Fernandez Velázquez
Giménez Animas Saenz
scores of Velascos
Riveras and Alvaros
a gauntlet of now rounded
marble mausoleums and flaked iron work
and many beneath my feet
their names a brick palimpsest
Gomez Estevez Molina Chacon
and their walled cousins
interred on the cheap by the Archdiocese
six stories high
six high and 78 across (like brick ovens, a different kind of rise)
as if by some death actuary
who had mastered far side economics
and those in grottos
either knowing their fates
would sink them
or knowing how best to avoid
the scouring Iberian wind