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Basilica de Nuestra Senora de Los Angeles: Cartago, Costa Rica

At the altar,
the pineapple picker women
kneel with legs torn
by serrated leaves and drop
twenty-colonnes coins
into offering plates. They light
candles for the dead and for
their children,
who will be soon enough.
They come here every year
in August, an obligation. Some walk
the whole way, dragging carts
of food and clothing, and sleep
in muddy roadside ditches.

Outside,
the women purchase
silver trinkets in the shapes
of arms and legs and mouths
from clamorous street vendors
in hopes that these offerings
will heal them. The priests
gather them at the end of the day
and store them, all of them,
in a chamber lined with glass-covered shelves.
The women buy bottles in the shape
of La Negrita, feminine bodies
that do not know the promise
which they hold, that they will fill
with the holy water of their saint’s spring
in the courtyard behind the basilica.
The poorest carry empty bleach bottles
or juice jugs to take their water home.

They approach the basilica
on their knees, sanctifying
sidewalks with their drying blood.
The old stones bear a reddish tint
after five hundred years. Their virgin
saint spoke with the Virgin Mary
here, and she is buried
beneath the altar. The women recite
prayers to the Virgin Mary
and La Negrita, clicking rosary beads.
They lean forward to kiss the rock
La Negrita stood on and cry for her death,
untimely, before she saw another vision
of the Holy Mother of Christ.

At the spring,
the women strip
to their cotton underslips
and let the blessed water
run over chubby arms and legs.
They fill their jugs, and on the bus home
that costs a week’s wages,
they hold the jugs to their bosoms
as if cradling sacred children.