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A poem about one iconic aspect of my experience growing up on the U.S.-Mexico border. This poem first appeared in Rattle #30.
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“What do you think is your greatest contribution in life?” I asked, almost like a young rock journalist running out of interview steam, looking for a final zinger for an approaching deadline. “I'm a writer, so I always write down things about people
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The sweetness turns your tongue inside out, and the texture of the cake on your inside-out tongue makes you feel all at once like you're in love, and like you're a child again.
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In ESL, I learned that I was not like the kids on the Brady Bunch. I was Hispanic. It took me three weeks to remember that. HIS-PAN-IC.
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Costas was the Greek who put these buildings up all over the city. But all it meant to us was forty five floors—all windows and glass—and not one ledge to give a foothold.
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I should have left by sea, /
what good was it /
not to suffer the sight /
of home shrinking further
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How would you like to leave the land of your ancestors, the place of your birth, the home of your identity?
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The boy curls beneath a plastic tarp until the truck stops in a depression of rock, hidden from the border's many eyes.
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