sugarcane fields whisper to those who reach el otro lado
descansa aquí amongst víboras y machetes
descansa aquí abajo de luna conjurada
in the coachella valley
children go to school and learn how to internalize silence
girls sit pretty with pigtails wrapped in bubble-ball hair ties
learn how to cast their eyes downward
so that when they ask the class what do you want to be when you grow up?
boys respond, i want to work in the fields like my dad
I. Lexapro
Like a booster detached from a shuttle, my body
Ended up in an ocean while fog enshrouded my mind.
Xanax never made me feel that unsteady; it just didn’t
Agree with Lamictal. I was glad my wife could cease
Preparing herself mentally before coming home; I’d been a
Rakshasa for months & appeared to be normal
Overnight, but the low dose made me immune to emotion.
Lifting Visqueen veils spread over little darlings,
selecting seedlings to set each predawn rise.
We coffeed up, chewed rumors, shared ourselves
wherever needed without a hint of roundworm
belly, malathion burn, or pay bounce still to come.
By LUPE MENDEZ
Todo mi maíz se llevó, ni pa’comer me dejó
El Barzón.
—Luis Pérez Meza
Esas tierras del rincón,
I look at them como un buey pando,
feeling the dry earth, crunch under
my boots. Es Julio, y si sigue asi,
dirán que es sequía. I pray it is not.
Winner of the 2023 DISQUIET Prize for Poetry
I’ve been negotiating my fears with speaking.
After a life of being half-heard;
after half a life of being unheard, I now think of the chaos
I avoided in this abstinence. In some stories Jesus
is not the fool, keeping himself
to himself, knowing only God knows
Not the circus of constellations
rifled with shooting stars
from nights we slept by the river.
Neither of us see or hear the kittens
when we set the garbage pile at the farm on fire.
We come back to spines and white smoke—
that means a new Pope is coming—
Cat in the window
examines the snowflakes that float—
marks of art in the winter dark
It’s a Christmas Eve in my homeland
the things to come
waiting to be unwrapped
“By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
Genesis 3:19
i.
In many ways we knew we had no choice.
We woke in time to tell the stars goodnight,
Returned to broken homes and heard the fights.
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