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The Jungle Café

By Gary Soto b. 1952 Gary Soto

We could wipe away a fly,

Drink, and order that yellow

Thing behind the glass, peach

Or sweet bread. Sunlight

Is catching on a fork,

Toothy wink from a star.

The fan is busy, the waiter is busy,

And today, in this café

Of two dollars and fifty

Cents, we’re so important

Dogs are shaking our hands.

“Welcome, turistas,” they say,

Or might say if they could

Roll their Rs. Where we sit

It’s three o’clock, and

Across the room, where

Old men are playing dominos

It’s maybe later, it’s maybe

Peru under their hats.

There are toads in this place

—sullen guards by the door—

And the bartender is just another

Uncle fooling with the radio.

“A little to the left,”

I shout, and he dials left,

Then right, until it’s German

Polkas, accordions by the sea.

The toads move a little.

An old man clicks a domino.

Omar, my gypsy friend, puts in—

“Love is chasing me up my sleeve.”

I salute him, he salutes me,

And together we’re so drunk

We’re making sense. Little

By little, with rum the color

Of a woman’s arm, we’re seeing things—

Of a dancer, no two,

Make that three with one chair.

And that man—the old one

Over there—is so blurry

He thinks he’s flying.

Gary Soto, “The Jungle Café” from Black Hair (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985). Copyright © 1985 by Gary Soto. Reprinted with the permission of the author, www.garysoto.com.

Source: Poetry (July 1984).

Biography

Gary Soto is known for a body of work that deals with the realities of growing up in Mexican-American communities; in poems, novels, short stories, plays and over a two dozen books for young people, Soto has recreated the world of the barrio, the urban, Spanish-speaking neighborhood where he was raised, bringing the sights, sounds and smells vividly to life within the pages of his books. Soto’s poetry and prose focus on everyday . . .

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