Buenos Dias

The Mexicans cluster together, steam rising from their breathes. A woman cloaked in a cheap blanket holds her baby to her breast. The men standing together silently, some wearing cowboy hats; en route, going somewhere or perhaps having only arrived. Hard to tell from the blank faces, the ghostly masks of future's past. Beside them on the sidewalk the sum of their worlds stuffed into old suitcases and frayed duffels, as if this were an undesignated bus stop, a transit point or terminal, this place outside 2911 Cherokee Street on a February morning, with the hand-painted sign out front that identified the shuttered business in an uneven scrawl as being the "EcNOmic ShOp."