Gary Soto

My chalk is no longer than a chip of fingernail, Chip by which I must explain this Monday Night the verbs “to get;” “to wear,” “to cut.” I’m not given much, these tired students, Knuckle-wrapped from work as roofers, Sour from scrubbing toilets and pedestal sinks. I’m given this room with five windows, A coffee machine, a piano with busted strings, The music of how we feel as the sun falls, Exhausted from keeping up. I stand at The blackboard. The chalk is worn to a hangnail, Nearly gone, the dust of some educational bone. By and by I’m Cantiflas, the comic Busybody in front. I say, “I get the coffee.” I pick up a coffee cup and sip. I click my heels and say, “I wear my shoes.” I bring an invisible fork to my mouth And say, “I eat the chicken.” Suddenly the class is alive— Each one putting on hats and shoes, Drinking sodas and beers, cutting flowers And steaks—a pantomime of sumptuous living. At break I pass out cookies. Augustine, the Guatemalan, asks in Spanish, “Teacher, what is ‘tally-ho’?” I look at the word in the composition book. I raise my face to the bare bulb for a blind answer. I stutter, then say, “Es como adelante.” Augustine smiles, then nudges a friend In the next desk, now smarter by one word. After the cookies are eaten, We move ahead to prepositions— “Under,” “over,” and “between,” Useful words when la migra opens the doors Of their idling vans. At ten to nine, I’m tired of acting, And they’re tired of their roles. When class ends, I clap my hands of chalk dust, And two students applaud, thinking it’s a new verb. I tell them adelante, And they pick up their old books. They smile and, in return, cry, “Tally-ho.” As they head for the door.

Listen, nephew. When I opened the cantina At noon A triangle of sunlight Was stretched out On the floor Like a rug Like a tired cat. It flared in From the window Through a small hole Shaped like a yawn. Strange I thought And placed my hand Before the opening, But the sunlight Did not vanish. I pulled back The shutters And the room glowed, But this pyramid Of whiteness Was simply brighter. The sunlight around it Appeared soiled Like the bed sheet Of a borracho. Amazed, I locked the door, Closed the windows. Workers, in from The fields, knocked To be let in, Children peeked Through the shutters, But I remained silent. I poured a beer, At a table Shuffled a pack Of old cards, And watched it Cross the floor, Hang on the wall Like a portrait Like a calendar Without numbers. When a fly settled In the sunlight And disappeared In a wreath of smoke, I tapped it with the broom, Spat on it. The broom vanished. The spit sizzled. It is the truth, little one. I stood eye to blank eye And by misfortune This finger This pink stump Entered the sunlight, Snapped off With a dry sneeze, And fell to the floor As a gift To the ants Who know me For what I gave.

Did you sneeze? Yes, I rid myself of the imposter inside me. Did you iron your shirt? Yes, I used the steam of mother's hate. Did you wash your hands? Yes, I learned my hygiene from a raccoon. I prayed on my knees, and my knees answered with pain. I gargled. I polished my shoes until I saw who I was. I inflated my résumé by employing my middle name. I walked to my interview, early, The sun like a ring on an electric stove. I patted my hair when I entered the wind of a revolving door. The guard said, For a guy like you, it's the 19th floor. The economy was up. Flags whipped in every city plaza In America. This I saw for myself as I rode the elevator, Empty because everyone had a job but me. Did you clean your ears? Yes, I heard my fate in the drinking fountain's idiotic drivel. Did you slice a banana into your daily mush? I added a pinch of salt, two raisins to sweeten my breath. Did you remember your pen? I remembered my fingers when the elevator opened. I shook hands that dripped like a dirty sea. I found a chair and desk. My name tag said my name. Through the glass ceiling, I saw the heavy rumps of CEOs. Outside my window, the sun was a burning stove, All of us pushing papers To keep it going.

When the sun’s whiteness closes around us Like a noose, It is noon, and Molina squats In the uneven shade of an oleander. He unfolds a map and, with a pencil, Blackens Panama Into a bruise; He dots rain over Bogotá, the city of spiders, And x’s in a mountain range that climbs Like a thermometer Above the stone fence The old never thought to look over. A fog presses over Lima. Brazil is untangled of its rivers. Where there is a smudge, Snow has stitched its cold into the field. Where the river Orinoco cuts east, A new river rises nameless From the open grasses, And Molina calls it his place of birth.

“It’s a ’49,” Rhinehardt said, and slammed The screen door, then worked his way around The dog turds in the yard To the Buick gutted from fire—the gears Teething rust, the fenders sloped Like the shoulders of a fired worker Out of beer. He circled the car Kicking the tires, eyeing The grille that still grinned the ribbed wings Of a sparrow. He looked inside and flies Lifted like patted dust, settling Into a loose knot on the visor. “Yeh, you’re right as right ... it’s a ’50,” Rhinehardt spat, his tongue rolling A false tooth into place. “It’s got no Running board.” He pressed a buck Into his son’s hand and retired to the porch Where he towel-flicked His wife from a chair And as evening came on watched beyond The street, a kennel of trees, Where—as he had dreamed—a plane would drop And bloom fire. Two bucks on that one.

Monsignor, I believed Jesus followed me With his eyes, and when I slept, An angel peeled an orange And waited for me to wake up. This was 1962. I was ten, small as the flame Of a struck match, my lungs fiery From hard, wintery play. When I returned home, Legs hurting, I placed my hands on the windowsill And looked out—clouds dirty as towels And geese I have yet to see again Darkening the western sky. Monsignor, a machine Had painted on the eyes of my toy soldier, Little dots off-center, Almost on his cheeks. Such a cheap toy, I drowned him over and over in my bath, Drowned him until the painted-on eyes flaked off. Then a leg fell off—surge of dirty water Sunk him to the bottom. I now at this age place hands on the windowsill, My eyes nearly on my cheeks, My belly with its rising tide. There is no angel with an orange at the edge Of my bed. There is no soldier Of God. Only a pane between the inside And the outside, between this living And this dying. Monsignor, Saintly man of this child's wonderment, When will I see the geese again?

We could wipe away a fly, Drink, and order that yellow Thing behind the glass, peach Or sweet bread. Sunlight Is catching on a fork, Toothy wink from a star. The fan is busy, the waiter is busy, And today, in this café Of two dollars and fifty Cents, we’re so important Dogs are shaking our hands. “Welcome, turistas,” they say, Or might say if they could Roll their Rs. Where we sit It’s three o’clock, and Across the room, where Old men are playing dominos It’s maybe later, it’s maybe Peru under their hats. There are toads in this place —sullen guards by the door— And the bartender is just another Uncle fooling with the radio. “A little to the left,” I shout, and he dials left, Then right, until it’s German Polkas, accordions by the sea. The toads move a little. An old man clicks a domino. Omar, my gypsy friend, puts in— “Love is chasing me up my sleeve.” I salute him, he salutes me, And together we’re so drunk We’re making sense. Little By little, with rum the color Of a woman’s arm, we’re seeing things— Of a dancer, no two, Make that three with one chair. And that man—the old one Over there—is so blurry He thinks he’s flying.

Today it’s going to cost us twenty dollars To live. Five for a softball. Four for a book, A handful of ones for coffee and two sweet rolls, Bus fare, rosin for your mother’s violin. We’re completing our task. The tip I left For the waitress filters down Like rain, wetting the new roots of a child Perhaps, a belligerent cat that won’t let go Of a balled sock until there’s chicken to eat. As far as I can tell, daughter, it works like this: You buy bread from a grocery, a bag of apples From a fruit stand, and what coins Are passed on helps others buy pencils, glue, Tickets to a movie in which laughter Is thrown into their faces. If we buy a goldfish, someone tries on a hat. If we buy crayons, someone walks home with a broom. A tip, a small purchase here and there, And things just keep going. I guess.

Wedding night Graciela bled lightly— But enough to stain his thighs— And left an alphabet Of teeth marks on his arm. At this, he was happy. They drank mescal In bed like the rich And smoked cigarettes. She asleep And the bottle empty, he hid A few coins in her left shoe, Earrings in the right. They worked long hours Hoeing crooked rows of maize. Evenings she wove rugs And embroidered curtains To market in Taxco. In short they lived well. However in the seventh month With child, her belly Rising like a portion of the sun, Something knotted inside her. The ribs ached. A fever climbed. Manuel summoned the Partera And though she burned pepper, And tied belts around The stretched belly, The child did not ease out. Days later she turned Onto her belly And between her legs Unraveled a spine of blood.

for César Chávez Field The wind sprays pale dirt into my mouth The small, almost invisible scars On my hands. The pores in my throat and elbows Have taken in a seed of dirt of their own. After a day in the grape fields near Rolinda A fine silt, washed by sweat, Has settled into the lines On my wrists and palms. Already I am becoming the valley, A soil that sprouts nothing. For any of us. Wind A dry wind over the valley Peeled mountains, grain by grain, To small slopes, loose dirt Where red ants tunnel. The wind strokes The skulls and spines of cattle To white dust, to nothing, Covers the spiked tracks of beetles, Of tumbleweed, of sparrows That pecked the ground for insects. Evenings, when I am in the yard weeding, The wind picks up the breath of my armpits Like dust, swirls it Miles away And drops it On the ear of a rabid dog, And I take on another life. Wind When you got up this morning the sun Blazed an hour in the sky, A lizard hid Under the curled leaves of manzanita And winked its dark lids. Later, the sky grayed, And the cold wind you breathed Was moving under your skin and already far From the small hives of your lungs. Stars At dusk the first stars appear. Not one eager finger points toward them. A little later the stars spread with the night And an orange moon rises To lead them, like a shepherd, toward dawn. Sun In June the sun is a bonnet of light Coming up, Little by little, From behind a skyline of pine. The pastures sway with fiddle-neck, Tassels of foxtail. At Piedra A couple fish on the river’s edge, Their shadows deep against the water. Above, in the stubbled slopes, Cows climb down As the heat rises In a mist of blond locusts, Returning to the valley. Rain When autumn rains flatten sycamore leaves, The tiny volcanos of dirt Ants raised around their holes, I should be out of work. My silverware and stack of plates will go unused Like the old, my two good slacks Will smother under a growth of lint And smell of the old dust That rises When the closet door opens or closes. The skin of my belly will tighten like a belt And there will be no reason for pockets. Harvest East of the sun’s slant, in the vineyard that never failed, A wind crossed my face, moving the dust And a portion of my voice a step closer to a new year. The sky went black in the ninth hour of rolling trays, And in the distance ropes of rain dropped to pull me From the thick harvest that was not mine. Fog If you go to your window You will notice a fog drifting in. The sun is no stronger than a flashlight. Not all the sweaters Hung in closets all summer Could soak up this mist. The fog: A mouth nibbling everything to its origin, Pomegranate trees, stolen bicycles, The string of lights at a used-car lot, A Pontiac with scorched valves. In Fresno the fog is passing The young thief prying a window screen, Graying my hair that falls And goes unfound, my fingerprints Slowly growing a fur of dust— One hundred years from now There should be no reason to believe I lived. Daybreak In this moment when the light starts up In the east and rubs The horizon until it catches fire, We enter the fields to hoe, Row after row, among the small flags of onion, Waving off the dragonflies That ladder the air. And tears the onions raise Do not begin in your eyes but in ours, In the salt blown From one blister into another; They begin in knowing You will never waken to bear The hour timed to a heart beat, The wind pressing us closer to the ground. When the season ends, And the onions are unplugged from their sleep, We won’t forget what you failed to see, And nothing will heal Under the rain’s broken fingers.