Seed for Song

For the children of Juarez

Morning.

The barrio radio
pitches hilarity at our windows,
with clumps of baritone, the news.

We try to untwist
from our sheets of sleep.
The day, already binding.

Outside, the bougainvillea
are magenta fountains,
bolder than we in daylight
and bolder at scaling walls.

Mama says, Go learn now.
Your education is public.
Keep your heads low, eyes up.

Our kitchen table stands
still warm from our breakfast bowls,
and Mama’s on the long ride
to a factory on the outskirts.

Until night, when the lightbulb
shivers on its wire
over the shhhh…tunk of Mama’s ironing
on tomorrow’s uniforms.

But we want what the factory makes.
And we do not want to die trying.

Javier died not trying anything.
Without and empty, only walking
where came sudden guns.

Hear? Until he died trying,
Jaime got cash for meth
by the arroyo that disappeared Maria,
and you didn’t hear.

The church pews slump,
old backs of prayer horses,
and Sundays we taste bitter copal
with body and blood.

The supper table stands
on loose legs, with cold places
at vacant chairs.

Don’t let it be.

Don’t let the bougainvillea drop
to piles of sepia,
fragile and faded

like we are already gone.

 

 

 

Tags: Border Town, Drug War, Juarez, Maquiladora, Mexico, Paz y Justica

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 11th, 2011 at 11:55 pm and is filed under Mexico Poems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.