Juan Delgado

For Father Bob I. By the road she hovers in heat waves, propped up on a cinderblock wall, revived by mixed house paints, fending for herself like wild mint. She is behind your shoulder, a blind spot, your city's poverty. A figure waits under a freeway ramp, gesturing as if she knows you. The fences and lots have the same dogs, peering through the chain-links, curious. While at the hospital, you see kids play another game of tag outside the emergency room doors and know how fingerprints squander their ridges and how digital minutes dry up under a glare. II. A stump is all that is left of a surveyor's point, a ponderosa pine in the foothills that started the city's perfect grid. The sidewalks of Baseline need more than a grocery bag's empty belly, plastic, a ripped-up flame standing and calling out to an old preacher like yourself. By the cameras mounted on the street lights, you wonder if they recorded the street sinking in the eyes of the woman who died on a bus bench. You pause in front of a freshly painted sign that says "Wrong Way," and see a sign within a sign, a resistance to the newest strip mall, the black lettering unevenly spaced and painted, a homespun warning to keep moving on.

On my cutting board, I discovered them, the tiniest of ants, roaming dots of lead. At first, they were too few to classify, hiding under crumbs, these scavengers of leftovers. Admiring their labor, I immediately granted them citizenship, these tailgaters of a kitchen's routines. In Miami, I had no stove, working far from my home. My wife was a midnight call to San Bernardino. While searching for crumbs, especially for the taste of apricot jelly, they fell into a line across my cutting board; I saw it again, saw the line my sixth-grade teacher drew on the board, pointing to each end. While he planted himself on his desk, he leaned his face toward us, telling us in a low voice: "You don't see it yet, you're too young still, but that line in front of you continues infinitely on either side. And if there is the slightest slope in that line, either way, it will slowly begin to sag, then curve and veer and eventually one end will find the other. And lines, lines are never perfect, they are like us, never completely straight. So just imagine the searching that goes on all around us, every day. And to happen on that union is really to witness the most earthly of forms you'll ever get to know. If you're lucky, you'll see that, even luckier if you're part of that union."

For Ofelia Camacho Delgado She wakes to the odor of sheep, trying to rub it off her hands. Dressed up in her native colors, standing by a tourist van, she is a dandelion, golden like the alpaca woven buttons of her sweater. She is done with the tourists taking her photo, holding a baby lamb. Without official papers in a new country, she briskly walks, and obscenely slow, a foreign tongue slithers by; its scales are the words she has not yet learned to trust. The baby girl hiding in her belly's nest will learn Quechua first,runa.                      the people The sick horses are pushed off the deck of a ship bound for Cuba. Pursuing, their heads bobbing, clearing the salt from their nostrils, they kick. As long as they can, they swim in the rushing swells, falling behind the ship's scent, swine and men. Know someone who needs their spirits lifted? Why not try a lavender or a rose scent? At the end of a hallway, a machine rattles and spits out ice cubes, some dropping, transparent on the dull vines of the carpet. Manuela pushes a cart of towels, shampoo, lotion, and soap bars scented with rose oil. Glancing down at the "Do Not Disturb" signs, she walks past the banker taking his third shower and the mother nursing her twins on a blanket spread across the floor. The peepholes are silent as a pile of dirty pillows, some dark never blinking, others bullet holes of light. Before leaving the Day's Inn on Mt. Vernon, she steals a few soap bars for her daughter, who places them in her dresser drawers, scenting her lingerie, fresh as cut flowers. A dandelion's root, far deeper, tolerant of drought and poor soil, is not an easily uprooted presence. Manuela hears the creaking of planks, the flapping of sails, and horses stomping, nervous, eyeing the full moon. She sees the marks of hooves in the sand, marks coming out from the sea and vanishing inland. She wakes to that odor again. This time she stands beside her Incan city, its green peaks cutting the sky open, painted on La Carreta Restaurant's wall. Her daughter is taking her photo, saying,"Sonríe, Mami , sonríe.""Smile, Mom, smile." The blindfolded horses are hoisted on board in belly slings, and their feet are tied, slightly touching the deck, suspended for most of the voyage, but once on land some will escape and revert to the wild. Know someone who needs their spirits lifted? Why not try a lavender or a rose scent? She lets the desert in, wild sage. The desert takes her back home while a farmer's pig crosses the highway. She sees her fake ID fly off the dashboard. The wheels of her upside-down car spin: Suspended, buckled to her seat, feet dangling, she spots the moon on the shards of her windshield, frozen tears, the peepholes blinking back at her. Death touches down like a hoof. A gust of wind pushes the seeds of dandelions upward, a flock of white, a gauze gown drifting over yuccas. Memory is the scent of soap bars taking refuge in a daughter's drawer.

¿Cómo es posible que me llamen extranjero?* A large plastic bag will keep you dry during the heavy rain storms. In Tapachula, you have a safe place to rest; ** it might be your last chance to call home. You know there are killers and thieves who are setting their traps along the way, and when you are riding on top of it, watch for the wasps living in the trees. Don’t fall asleep inside it—you might disappear. If you are exhausted, jump off and rest. Follow its tracks until you feel it returning. The faster it advances, the stronger its pull is. Don't be fooled—at first it will lure you in with its steady prowess, but it can slit a leg off or two, so don't be fooled by its hum. If you jump off, don't just stand there. And don't run beside its belly either— No, run away from the pounding. Run like a ceiling is falling, like people are falling on you. As for routes, go through Matamoros for getting into Texas, and for California, get to Tijuana, but if you cross Nogales into Arizona, be very careful. You will find discarded shoes and gutted suitcases in fields. There are graveyards without names. No one carries an ID. For others and you, we give offerings to our clandestino priest who was killed during the Cristero War. *** Always watch out for the white vans—they are full of policemen. They drive very slow. It takes up to six days to cross the desert. Always carry plenty of water. Ranchers carry guns. Everything has thorns. At first sight, think twice before trusting even a good omen.

1. A crow gliding over a ravine was The sign his eyes were waiting for. They thought they were ready to cross. The tumbleweed listening to a cricket And seeing a line of ants snaking in Was the figure of his younger sister, Huddled by him, asking for a campfire. They made it as far as a roadside store And held their hands over the electric coils. When asked if they were going to buy anything, Their tongues broke off into halves And fell to the floor like Popsicles. 2. My father says I was born to translate What he could only nod to for years. He also says that God made a mistake By blurring out his eyes first because He can hear her asking for a blanket. She saw a church adorned with hipbones, Sun-bleached, and beautiful as curved jewelry. She dreamt of its wide doors, and after dipping Her finger in His palm, she felt His warmth. My father says that cactus needles fly And burn like the memory of lost ones, Then he tells me I was born to study The sand trails and notice when footsteps Drag and turn to knee and handprints. Those are ones I need to follow, he says.

I. The Santa Anas, childlike and profound, blanket me; I see the dust stirring the valley and clouding downtown San Bernardino; I feel the sting of your loss. The black oak leaves, brittle, tumbling, crack under my feet. Is your hand touching the dryness of my lips? You sing: "Don't sit, mountain-still, a coyote skull whistling." I tug at the skin on my wrist, trying to peel off the seam, my stubbornness. On Sunday, I wear my only decent dress, gypsy-green. I hear heels scurry around me, Our priest is a hinged tongue, his verse tucking us in. Why can't I focus on anyone's face? II. The winds fly from a canyon's belly into a peasant blouse. A stampede of leaves and twigs rushes by a patch of grass, scraping across a sidewalk and dragging their nails, fierce and defiant as a local poet's words. From the sides of mountains, waterfalls of dust form, and during my pilgrimage, the fate of lip-stained Styrofoam cups will not unnerve me. Not worried about compasses, I'll go by fences guarding abandoned lots, through desperate patches of grass, yellowing, past one-legged billboards of paper and glue. Resting under the shade of bus stops, I'll recite old tales to ward off the haunted and the debris of family floods piling up. When the voices on an updraft emphatically circle like red-tailed hawks, I'll recall the tail of a comet urging you to wrap yourself in its flames and dissolve. Entranced by a burning equal to yours, I'll walk eighty miles, traveling the routes of my childhood candy wrappers. III. In the moisture of a dirt road I traveled, you are the rain that visited the night before. Does your tongue sense the heat of bodies flying in the Santa Anas? Again, I am lost tracing your face, a dry playa, the eyes of clay, a brown maze of upward glances. Are you a creek bridge, a fallen cedar, lodged between sunbaked boulders inviting me to cross? You are the one taking away my fear of being wheeled down a hallway without doors. IV. With twigs in my hair, I was found somewhere near the national forest. Bystanders pulled back their sniffing dogs while I stood, barefoot and tired. When I predicted earthquakes in China, Peru and Cucamonga, California, I baffled my psychiatric ward. After a nurse removed my handout of The Seasons: Winter, wildlife appeared on the hospital grounds. A mule deer's antlers surfaced in the parking lot, weaving among the staff's cars. A coyote leaped into the patients' garden and howled under a security light as if to say: "I am here. Where are you?" A roadrunner scooted across a lot, losing one of its long tail feathers. All this had the staff checking again if their office windows were latched. In my notebook, I drew a coy face with blurry dots for eyes that peer out of a hollow trunk, struck by lightning, charred by fire, with smoke still rising under your vaulted sky. V. Outside my window, the sky is suddenly draped by a hum, a hummingbird's hunger. Her wings wrinkle the sky. Unlike a chickadee too busy and full of seed chatter, the hummingbird puffs up the air, feeding like a storm, a redness, a sideway rocket past the world's ear. That spark reminds me of you. Thin-rooted, lingering too long, absorbed in window reveries, I'll be released. Here, the soil is moist, sponge-like, storing. Worms surface, digesting their way up. I, too, am ready for the driving winds of another season.

As apparent as the rest, the asphalt cracks are crowded with yellow weeds, the rust goes beyond its bleeding color, and the lot's rails, battered by cars, cast larger bars by noon. On one side of the market someone painted a row of flower pots, hanging geraniums for the locals who must now go across town. As apparent as the rest, El Tigre walks upright, wears a tiny sombrero and sarape, and pushes a grocery cart full of food. His painted stripes are starting to flake like the bounty he wheels for the families drifting into the parking lot off 3rd Street and next to the train station still waiting to the retrofitted for the big one.

INS officers raided a building, taking twelve illegal aliens into custody. The owner was cited for employing workers without proper identification. 1. RAID Ernesto’s boot heels are wild hooves Being roped in, left bound in the air. Carmen, slow-footed, nauseous with child, Fights them off by swinging her purse. “Pinche cabrones saben hablar español Cuando nos van a arrestar,” she says As her voice is drowned out by a row Of washing machines on their rinse cycle. Like a cat spooked out of a trash bin, Sal runs into the street. Chorus: ¡Chingado! 2. A GIRL AND HER FATHER We were driving through town, Mama, Right by where people pick up the bus When this man jumps out right in front of us. Dad hit the brakes. His eyes got this big, Mama. He was running from the law, that’s for sure. Just be glad no one got hurt, mija. Try not to think about it anymore, mija. We won’t go that way again, that’s for sure. 3. THE FACTORY Two of the old-timers talked about unions: “A trabajar, porque hablar de las uniones Sólo trae la migra de nuevo.” 4. A YOUNG MOTHER Can you imagine how many diapers We went through with the twins? The disposable ones were way too expensive, So we switched to cloth. They were great. No, We didn’t wash them. Thank God, we had a service. We just put the dirty ones in plastic bags, And they picked them up and dropped off clean ones Right on our porch every two weeks. It made things so much easier. And you know, We didn’t have to worry about those summer rashes Because their little bottoms could breathe better. If you can afford the service, just do it. Or at least do it for the first six months. It’s even good for the environment. 5. JEFE No son gallinas Esperando un huevo. ¡A trabajar! Chorus: ¡Chingado!