Y los muchachos cling
to the cantina’s jukebox heart, sing:
we never go nowhere we never see nothing
but work: these fingers bleed every daylong day,
aching from la joda of the harvest–
y la muerte, esa puta que les chifla
from the bus station balcony, from I-10,
from Imperial Ave. truck lot behind the power station,
from waterbreak delirium, from short-hoe
genuflections down pistolbarrel fields–
and the canals, green,
pumping life into those chiles, los tomates, once
a year some poor pendejo can’t take the grease-
heat drudge, the life of a burro, the lonesome nights
of sweat and harsh sheets and drinks
tattered lips pulling tequila
till el vato’s so alucinado he thinks
he can run free, thinks
the trucks with spotlights are motherships, thinks
he sees Villa shooting cars off I-25, hears Tlaloc, god
of storms, calling: water to water,
rain to rain, mud to mud—feed me your tears—I
thirst—I will feed your daughters, I will
sweeten fields, I will ease your heat—and
he runs
he runs
se larga el guey
down the alley, out
dirt road, cuts
under freeway, jumps
barbwire
where that homey last year drove his toca
into the ditch
he’s so pedo he can’t see
if it’s stars or distant windows, he
can’t tell if it’s roadside crosses where some bus
drove into a delivery truck
or a fence all white and crooked
or a boneyard
where his grandfathers fall apart
beneath him, he runs—
through carrizo reeds, midnight sunburn,
cane and chapulines dry as bones,
rattling like deer hooves, like calaveras on
the Day of the Dead, like Yaqui rattles,
like old Death snapping her fingers and then amazing:
green
green, cold green of the canal: sun-scummed
but icy, fresh and still steaming through back-crack
cabbage fields, from sunrise to el poniente,
going going green endlessly going
verde que te quiero verde going
he dips his head in to drink
and it grips him: he slips: he’s a watersnake, slick:
drinks his way to the bed of the acequia
and spreads his dust there: he is become an offering
to the raingod and it is good: he breathes
the green into his lungs until his heart grows cool:
and he goes—
he flows west: frogs ping off his back: dragonflies
part before him: tortugas worry his shirt tails:
he flies mouth-down, arms wide as cranes’ wings
touching the rusted rims as he sails: miles
slide along his callused fingers—across the land he goes, no one
watching: he goes through the harvest: corn
combs his hair: nights he goes, days, no patrols
hunting him now: his lips never stop
kissing his shadow.
And he touches earth
400 miles away, gone somewhere now
south of Calexico—almost home—
nothing in his pockets—
small fish
in his eyes
like coins.
Reblogged this on Myriad Ways and commented:
This is how our cheap food is paid for. And yet we can look at our early spring California produce without a feeling of complicity.