The instant I saw this Coca Cola table, I remembered a trip to Mexico and an afternoon snack beside a tropical river. That must have been an important day, as back when I thought I was going to be a poet (~2003, for those of you working on writing my biography), I wrote a poem about that same afternoon:

Between Cancer and the Equator

The hotel’s pink stucco façade –
faded from age and sun and inattention –
guards the narrow street.
Four Americans crawl
from a blue Ford
pushing their way through air
glutinous from just-ended rain.
Crossing the desolate lobby
to a jacaranda-shaded veranda
they sit on dented red chairs
drink tepid Coca Cola through paper straws
eat pineapple pan dulce.

Below them
a languid river creeps past
its thick water the same color as the pastry.

San Angelo, Texas
photographed 11.24.2018