(A slightly different version of this poem was published in The Chaffey Review.)
Light sinks into the skin
of the ocean.
Under crumpled canvas in the back of a pickup
headed north over the 15 freeway’s washboard,
a kid, laboring for breath, rides the bumps in the road,
stomach acid slithering up his throat. A mystery
of heat and darkness. Cool jets of exhaust and morning air
lick at the tarp, causing the boy to cough.
Tonight is too far away.
Light through the water moves faster
than his thoughts, his tendency to equate space
with freedom, his devotion to Los Santos,
his memory of kidnappings, the burnt offerings
Tia Juanita made after her daughter died.
He hears the unfamiliar whine of American radio
streaming out of the windows of passing cars.
His mother is breathing into his ear.
The faint smell of the mint she found
in between the seat cushions in Ernesto’s pickup
before they met with the coyote. The smell
of wet switchgrass, gravely waving to the drivers,
the shoulder gently sloping like a pregnant belly,
swollen. The taste of honeywater in his mouth.
The dark circles under her eyes haunt his memory.
She’s passionate, even in sleep, in the face
of disconsolate attempts to move north.
But now they’re almost there.
But where is that?
Tia Inez will still be pulling a double shift when they get
to a cul-de-sac in La Puente. The bridge.
The front door of the apartment will be screened
by a heavy lacework of rusting iron, bursting with red,
like capillaries on a drunkard’s nose.
He will stare at the stucco facade.
A billboard will read: “You deserve a break today.”
The bright letters will mean nothing to him.
He will mouth the word for home.
The boy closes his eyes:
The waves sang in the distance,
the foam white like ghosts. His urine etched steaming worms
into the uneven ground. He stumbled over the litter
in the street – dominoes, teacups, broken glass.
On the beach, he gave his yellow rock to one of the beachcombers
so the man wouldn’t find the anemone hidden in the turbid water
of his bucket. Ernesto zigzagged through the streets,
his truck cutting turns like a scalpel. It idled
in front of their home. Words spilled out of their mouths
when the coyote stuck out his hand. He had no time
for questions and the money paid for travel, not answers.
Ernesto said his brother, Tonino, had a hook
instead of a hand, a piece of the price
of his northbound trip.
The boy’s mother kisses him
and then the cross hanging from her neck. The thumb
of sun has prodded her awake. Her swelling belly
ripples in the heat, a mirage, a miracle. A sheet
of sunlight cleft by hungry shadows.
As he and his mother arrive at the border,
he feels the same way he did on the ledge
overlooking the sea. There is nowhere else to go.
The rocks reach out of the water like spears,
but he pushes off anyway. He jumps headlong,
the sea foam spilling like clouds.
Somewhere beyond memory,
the sun-stained water gurgles,
salt glazing his lips.
