Unaccompanied. Javier Zamora

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СКАЧАТЬ you left me. Papá, you left me.

      Abuelos, I left you. Tías, I left you.

      Cousins, I’m here. Cousins, I left you.

      Tías, welcome. Abuelos, we’ll be back soon.

      Mamá, let’s return. Papá ¿por qué?

      Mamá, marry for papers. Papá, marry for papers.

      Tías, abuelos, cousins, be careful.

      I won’t marry for papers. I might marry for papers.

      I won’t be back soon. I can’t vote anywhere,

      I will etch visas on toilet paper and throw them from a lighthouse.

      «

      When I saw the coyote —

      I didn’t want to go

      but parents had already paid.

      I want to pour their sweat,

      each step they took,

      and braid a rope.

      I want that cord

      to swing us back to our terracota roof.

      No, I wanted to sleep

      in my parents’ apartment.

      B

       You don’t need more than food,

       a roof, and clothes on your back.

      I’d add Mom’s warmth, the need

      for war to stop. Too many dead

      cops, too many tattooed dead.

      ¿Does my country need more of us

      to flee with nothing but a bag?

      Corrupt cops shoot “gangsters”

      from armored cars. Javiercito,

      parents say, we’ll send for you soon.

      »

      Last night, Mom wanted to listen to “Lulu’s Mother,”

      a song she plays for the baby she babysits.

      I don’t know why this song gets to me, she said, then:

      “Ahhhh Lu-lu-lu-lu / don’t you cry / Mom-ma won’t go / a-way /

      Ahhhh Lu-lu-lu-lu / don’t you cry / Pop-pa won’t go / a-way. . .”

      It’s mostly other nannies in the class; it’s supposed to help

      with the babies’ speech development, she says, mijo,

       sorry for leaving. I wish I could’ve taken you to music classes.

      She reached over, crying. Mom, you can sing to me now,

      was all I could say, you can sing to me now.

       To President-Elect

      There’s no fence, there’s a tunnel, there’s a hole in the wall, yes, you think right now ¿no one’s running? Then who is it that sweats and shits their shit there for the cactus. We craved water; our piss turned the brightest yellow — I am not the only nine-year-old who has slipped my backpack under the ranchers’ fences. I’m still in that van that picked us up from “Devil’s Highway.” The white van honked three times, honks heard by German shepherds, helicopters, Migra trucks. I don’t know where the drybacks are who ran with dogs chasing after them. Correction: I do know. At night, they return to say sobreviviste bicho, sobreviviste carnal. Yes, we over-lived.

       Pump Water from the Well

      This is no shatter and stone.

      Come skip toes in my chest, Salvador.

      I’m done been the shortest shore.

      ¿And did you love all the self out of you for me?

      I want you to torch the thatch above my head.

      To be estero. To be mangroves.

      There are mornings I wake with taste of tortillas in warmed-up milk.

      There are pomegranates no one listens to.

      ¿Is this the mierda you imagined for me?

      Everywhere is war.

      The patch of dirt I pumped water from to bathe.

      Chickens, dogs, parakeets, this was my block.

      The one I want to shut off with rain.

      Where I want to plant an island.

      Barrio Guadalupe hijueputa born and bred cerote ¿qué onda?

      The most beautiful part of my barrio was stillness

      and a rustling of wings caught in the soil calling me to repair it.

      Don’t tell me I didn’t bring the estero up north where there’s none.

      I’ve walked uptown. I saw Mrs. Gringa.

      The riff between my fingers went down in whirlpools.

      Silence stills me. Pensé quedarme aquí I said.

      I don’t understand she said. From my forehead,

      the jaw of a burro, hit on the side and scraped by a lighter to wake the song

      that speaks two worlds.

      The kind of terrifying current.

      The kind of ruinous wind.

       Instructions for My Funeral

      Don’t burn me in no steel furnace, burn me

      in Abuelita’s garden. Wrap me in blue-

      white-and-blue [ a la mierda patriotismo ].

      Douse me in the cheapest gin. Whatever you do,

      don’t judge my home. Cut my bones

      with a machete till I’m finest СКАЧАТЬ