Unit 1: Vocabulary from Readings 4

At the Shuttle Bus Stop, they see the All American Shuttle, the Apollo Shuttle, Celebrity Airport Livery, the Great American Stageline, the Movie Shuttle, the Transport, Ride-4-You, and forty-two other magic buses waiting to whisk them everywhere from Bakersfield to Disneyland.

They see fast-talking, finger-snapping, palm-slapping jive artists straight from their TV screens shouting incomprehensible slogans about deals, destinations, and drugs.

They have arrived in the Land of Opportunity, and the opportunities are swirling dizzily, promiscuously, around them.

Above them in the terminal, voices are repeating, over and over, in Japanese, Spanish, and unintelligible English, “Maintain visual contact with your personal property at all times.”

There are “Do Not Cross” yellow lines cordoning off parts of the sidewalk and “Wells Fargo Alarm Services” stickers on the windows; there are “Aviation Safeguard” signs on the baggage carts and “Beware of Solicitors” signs on the columns; there are even special phones “To Report Trouble.”

More male and female voices are intoning continuously, “Do not leave your car unattended” and “Unattended cars are subject to immediate tow-away.”

There are no military planes on the tarmac here, the newcomers notice, no khaki soldiers in fatigues, no instructions not to take photographs, as at home; but there are civilian restrictions every bit as strict as in many a police state.

“This Terminal Is in a Medfly Quarantine Area,” says the sign between the terminals. “Stop the Spread of Medfly!”

Around them is an unending cacophony of antitheft devices, sirens, beepers, and car-door openers; lights are flashing everywhere, and the man who fines them $16 for losing their parking ticket has the tribal scars of Tigre across his forehead.

You were the caravan master at the reins
driving your thread needle artillery across the mosaic cloth bridges

oh mother you plunged me sobbing and laughing
into our past
into the river crossing at five
into the spinach fields
into the plainview cotton rows
into tuberculosis wards

into braids and muslin dresses
sewn hard and taut to withstand the thrashings of twenty-five years