there is bone. a no / flicked off / uncouth grass. tire / body; an itch of restlessness

amá, when you were alive, i never once spoke to you in / english. now, ten years after your passing, i think there / are things i would like to say that i’ve never learned / how to say in spanish.

I’m sitting at this kitchen table, talking / to my father’s father. His tongue tends to get stuck on the / same stories like the trigger of a jammed carbine, coughing on /  things that should’ve passed through like the shape of a life / through wall, but no. His stories bleed together: comrades / fallen in a field far from home. I have their dog tags in pocket, / but I play audience anyway.

She was a ghost from the day she was born. /  Arm & Hammer baking soda. Just a hammer / and a strong arm. Head wasn’t as hard as his. /  The love of him that was hard-headed. 

America, I am the daughter of immigrants deserted in deserts. / Brown flesh left out for coyotes to chew, quench their hunger, and shit our bones. /  Save me America! /  It’s those damn Mexicans! / Amidst saguaros and chollas, /  strewn about like some bloody trail, /  bloated and sun-split bodies pave the way home. / We have guts to spare, or didn’t you know? / Or maybe we just like the taste of your honey; / either way, it’s liberty or death or something like that.