the ice worker speaks of endings
the moon has turned into an accusing street lamp
and i keep hearing the loud breath of helicopters
and the incessant cough of guns going off everywhere—
pow! pow! pow!—as if silence had been taken hostage
somewhere to the north, silence and peace tied up
and gagged in a pantry filled with rich man’s food.
don’t ask me to prove things to you. there’s no time.
don’t ask me to paint pretty pictures or draw diagrams
explaining to you how we got here. just breathe
and you’ll smell the truth. feel the flesh of rage,
rotting, coughing, and dying, and there’s nothin’ you
can do
to stop this apocalyptic ball of wax from unraveling. nothin’.
i keep sittin’ here thinking sometimes of the woman i wanted
to love, the land i wanted to retrieve. i’m sittin’ here
under
the cool moon’s glare reciting Bible verses to the tree
in front of my house, to the bermuda grass, to the side-
walk and street and wires that crisscross this neighbor-
hood. you see, i’m waiting for the end of the world
and the earth is full of violence and the hand of God is calling
“ cover yourself! cover yourself! I love you so much. cover!”
but there are only cars and trees and the touch of a lover for a minute.
there are only wires and grass and now, here and now,
the clouds are opening into light.
From The Iceworker Sings (Bilingual Press, 1999). The Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame would like to thank Bilingual Press for permission to post these poems.
