(If you don’t know and love Topo Chico, Mexican mineral water, you obviously don’t live in Texas or Mexico. This poem was also inspired by “Bottled Water” by Kim Dower, featured at American Life in Poetry: Column 460).
TOPO CHICO
“Siempre cae bien” Always goes down well.
Tonight I do not need a margarita
a mojito
a Mexican martini will not fortify
me. But then again
I don’t have weeks to travel to a magical
thermal spring
(though I may have an incurable disease)
just like King Moctezuma’s daughter
the Aztec princess
I don’t know whose face is sunk
deep in the prodigal stream—drawn
right there on the label of my Topo Chico
I only know sometimes you must drown
your sorrows
submit to the flow from that mole-
shaped hill stay all day
Stay all week
Stay until you’re well enough to lift your head