by Spencer Rico
Labor lives thick in our blood like the humid air in July,
I remember anxiously hoping that
the university envelopes filled with numbers
were made of enough ink to fulfill family dreams dating back to 1929,
When farmers in Cocula, Jalisco would lift the sun every morning
and then watch it slowly sink as they swung machetes
weighted with the frustrations of poverty at stalks of sugarcane,
And my father,
Who split oceans heading north just to get here,
Only to be welcomed with words of hatred
and the naming of colors,
sleeping under kitchen tables and inside bathtubs,
going to night school and waking up before the sun,
taking loans and cigarette filled clothing,
eating hunger and sweating engine oil,
Just so he could make sure those hardships never
touch his children.
He had to wipe dirt from our tiny little fingers,
like a bleached baptism
to free them of supposed deformities
so nobody had to hear the word wetback again,
So employers would shake hands at first glance
and understand sharp palettes rinsed from the planet
with clear english syllables rolling off the tongue
like a Ford Model T Production line.
And for me,
I still carry stress from weekends at the shop
with busted knuckles and hands covered in soot.
The cracks in my hands at school:
black veins.
I lift up rocks buscando por palabras como una historia perdida
So I can patch together the remains of an implosion,
I am the vibrant threads of embroidered dresses
de Jalisco whose needles lead through linens
like the dolphins who weave themselves in between
the waves of the oceans amongst none other than sand and silt
De la tierra que conozco
About the Author
Spencer is a Mexican-American poet who originates from Cocula, Jalisco and is currently studying at UC Davis.
*Previously published in Open Ceilings summer 2020 Vol 1 Issue 2 Mechanism Press Publishing