“
Now reading
Those Seventy-Two Bodies Belong to Us
You novelize a route with flesh dumped at the ranch, can’t backtrack the courage of miles we traversed in the dark, on a sighing speedboat, through jungles that spat only shoes, calzones, bodies twisted as guitarras when there’s no grito left in them to pluck. Back home, we priested our mornings with sun-dried sombreros, communed with our ghosts & had no wish to sacrifice our bellies, our terneros, our Consuelos. With wings from acero, we’d crash latitudinal objections, mystify Bengay on the mouths of our map-torn feet, pay no heed to grief’s ambidextrous strophes. If we choked on our own blood we harpooned optimism. But when the vans deadlocked our pilgrimage we knew our shadows had crumbed the anesthetic vultures. They pressed their loaded beaks upon our backs until our knees bent sour orange. One asked if we served the enemy, but we took enemy to mean a seed that sits quietly underfoot, abashed to vestibule the grating sun. Blindfolded, we faced the gloom volcanoes of their mothers. How those mothers might’ve screamed like ours in their tortured independence: bloody thunder in the brown-starched symphonies, a wind that howled & shoved its thumbs through feral lands probing for judgment or commiseration. Chingado god that copycatted these legs from monotony. Chingado god that hewed our wrists, a pair of stems to strap behind our wrested boots & jeans. Whoever supplied a plea to that deviant afternoon’s rationed blessings neglected to add chile, sazón, a nosegay of tortillas to the long road. Mothers who’ve come to reclaim our tongues in the dirt: remind us of the braids in the phrasings of our dreams before we vanished. Pat the ground for the bodkinned orchids. Wasn’t it yesterday we were siphoning forecasts with our fingers roving on the table? Or caught your chests pain-leavened & stilled them with the rumpus of our hopes?