I’m sitting at this kitchen table, talking / to my father’s father. His tongue tends to get stuck on the / same stories like the trigger of a jammed carbine, coughing on /  things that should’ve passed through like the shape of a life / through wall, but no. His stories bleed together: comrades / fallen in a field far from home. I have their dog tags in pocket, / but I play audience anyway.

She was a ghost from the day she was born. /  Arm & Hammer baking soda. Just a hammer / and a strong arm. Head wasn’t as hard as his. /  The love of him that was hard-headed. 

America, I am the daughter of immigrants deserted in deserts. / Brown flesh left out for coyotes to chew, quench their hunger, and shit our bones. /  Save me America! /  It’s those damn Mexicans! / Amidst saguaros and chollas, /  strewn about like some bloody trail, /  bloated and sun-split bodies pave the way home. / We have guts to spare, or didn’t you know? / Or maybe we just like the taste of your honey; / either way, it’s liberty or death or something like that.

I saw them take your body out of the house, leg hanging off the stretcher, your mother, a / crazed Mexican legend, screaming after you. Earlier, her little baby slumped on the toilet, / slipping through his father’s hands; hands that had once ended lives in some Asian jungle, / couldn’t keep you here anymore than they could keep a country.