Tijuana Brothel

by Devlin De La Chapa

The flow of warm Tequila
grazes my tonsils, and my face sours,

the sticky heat smoldering off my tainted skin

and the brothel flies buzzing around my semi-exposed breasts

don’t tempt my conversation with the local Juan

sitting across the table from me, but I give in to temptation;

but as subtle, and as unnerving as his proposition is,

I am bounded to this tragically beautiful place

of Tijuana young beauties and self-solicited American girls;

they visit me in vast numbers these local lifers and foreign travelers,

I welcome them with a smile and a hefty peso and a shot of Tequila,

I open my doors, and openly seduce them to inhibit my body

without reason, without consequence, without mercy, just for my pleasure,

handsome men, rugged men, foul men, lanky men, scrawny men

have left a piece of their salty debauchery essence within my defiled temple;

before my revolution, my boyfriend and I spent hours at a nearby motel

lost on Mexican moonshine and lost in the cold hard vacants of our sex

then spent the next few days fighting the local Federales for money;

he once lived in squalor pissing around in drugged-out pissholes

abandoning me to my own devices; this black-haired-green-eye-girl

became the inclination of man’s greatest sexual principal outlet;

years will have past but I remain an image of a slave-driven impromptu

hoarding the foul of my own stench as I become more unAmericanized each day;

the dread remains of my boyfriend continue to wander these filthy tourist attraction streets

in search of something befalling to us all just to take home and gossip stories about;

the sun is starting to set in the far off west, my ears listen to the sound of business

clamor down in the smoky bar, brothel girls giggling, men laughing, corridos playing,

I hear the unzipping of worn down Wranglers, the unbuttoning snaps on a day old shirt,

and ostrich boots slovenly, nervously walking across the dusky room where I patiently wait