José Antonio Rodríguez

No pitying/“Ah” for this one —Alan Shapiro No, nor a fierce hurrah for what it does without choice, for following the light for the same reason the light follows it. Just a thing rough to the touch, a face like a thousand ticks turning their backs, suckling at something you can’t see, and a body like a tag off the earth so that my child hands couldn’t tear it out from the overgrown lot next door. My palms raw with the shock of quills and spines. Its hold like spite, and ugly except when seen from a distance— a whole field of them by the highway, an 80-mile-per-hour view like a camera’s flash. All of them like halos without saints to weigh them down.