Unpeopled Eden

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts, We died in your valleys and died on your plains. We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes, Both sides of the river, we died just the same. "Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportees)," Woody Guthrie I after the immigration raid Beneath one apple tree the fruit lies flung like the beads from a rosary with a broken string. Another tree stands amused over the strangeness of a shoe that pretends to be an apple in its redness, though it'll never be an apple with that lace stem and a pit where a core should be. The tree at the end of the row will weep over the pillage all week. Around its trunk, debris: straw hats, handkerchief, a basket going hungry for what's out of reach. Somewhere in the orchard a screech goes weaker by the hour. A radio without paws, it cannot claw its chords to end its suffering. But silence comes, eventually, and the apple trees will rest, gathering the shadows to their roots as the flame inside each apple falls asleep. All the while, finches perch among the branches—patient vultures waiting for the fruit to rot. For a wasp, intoxicated by the sugars, this is the perfect place to nest. The colony will thrive inside decay: the apples softening until their wrinkled skins begin to sink, the seeds poking through like teeth. The trees will sway without the wind because the ground will boil with larvae. A bird will feast until it chokes and ants will march into the belly through the beak. II after the ride by bus A strand of hair pretends to be a crack and sticks to glass. A piece of thread sits on a seat, pretends to be a tear. The bus makes believe no one cried into their hands and smeared that grief onto its walls. The walls will keep the fingerprints a secret until the sheen of oils glows by moon. Rows of ghosts come forth to sing. Until that keening rocks the bus to rest, the fumes intoxicate the solitary button—single witness to the shuffling of feet and a final act of fury: the yanking of a wetback's shirt. The button popped right off the flannel, marched in the procession and then scurried to the side. The lesson: if wounded, stay behind to die. The bus breathes out the shapes turned silhouettes turned scent of salt and sweat. The steering wheel unspools, every window shaking loose the wetness of its glare. And now a riddle squats over the parking lot: What creature stands its ground after evisceration? Roadkill. Clouds close in to consume the afterbirth. III after the detention in the county jail A mausoleum also keeps these gems: precipitation that hardens into diamonds on the cobweb stems, streams of urine that shimmer like streaks of gold. Lights coax out the coat of polish on the floor and what's solid softens into water stripped of ripples. Stilled and empty, a river that has shoved its pebbles down its throat. The cell holds out three drops of blood and will barter them for company, hungry for the smell of men again. Janitor, border guard or detainee, it's all the same musk of armpit, garlic breath, oils that bubble up from crack to tailbone, scent of semen from the foreskin, fungus from the toes. Without takers, the keyhole constricts in the cold. IV after the deportation plane falls from the sky A red-tailed hawk breaks through the smoke and doesn't drop the way the bodies did when the plane began to dive and spat pieces of its cargo out the door. No grace, the twitching of such a great machine. No beauty to its blackening inside the pristine canvas of majestic blue—a streak of rage made by a torch and not a paintbrush. The hawk lands on the canyon and snaps its neck in quick response to the vulgar cracking on the boulders, to the shrill of metal puncturing the canyon, to the burst of flames that traps a nest of mice within the lair turned furnace, burning shriek, and hair. Stunned host of sparrows scatters. Fume of feathers, pollution in the air. Poison in the lungs of all that breathes. A darkness rises. The blue absorbs it the way it dissipates a swarm after the crisis of a shattered hive. Heaven shows its mercy also, swallowing the groan that spilled out of the hill. No signs of tragedy by dusk except a star splayed over rock, the reek of fumes—a disemboweled god. V after the clean-up along Los Gatos Canyon What strange flowers grow in the shadow. Without petals and with crooked twigs for stems. The butterflies that pollinated them were bits of carbon glowing at the edge. The solitary lone wolf spider doesn't dare to bite the scorched caul on the canyon. It packs its fangs for brighter lands. The footprints drawn in black do not match the footprints in the orchard though they also bear the weight of the unwanted. The chain gang called upon to gather the debris sang the Prison Blues all afternoon: Inmate, deportee, in your last attempt to flee every bone splits into three. VI after the communal burial Twenty-eight equals one deportation bus equals one cell in the detention center, one plane-load of deportees, one plunge into the canyon, one body in the coffin although one was a woman—sister not alone anymore among the chaperone of angels with wings of stone. Manuel Merino, Julio Barrón, Severo, Elías, Manuel Calderón, Francisco, Santiago, Jaime, Martín, Lupe, Guadalupe, Tomás, Juan Ruiz, Alberto, Ramón, Apolonio, Ramón, Luis, Román, Luis, Salvador, Ignacio Navarro, Jesús, Bernabé, Rosalío Portillo, María, y José. Y un Deportado No Identificado. No papers necessary to cross the cemetery. The sun floods the paths between tombs and everything pushes out into light. No shame to be a cherub without a nose. The wreath will not hide its decay. Cement displays its injuries with no regrets. This is the place to forget about labor and hardship and pain. No house left to build, no kitchen to clean, no chair on a porch, no children to feed. No longing left except a wish that will never come true: Paint us back into the blank sky's blue. Don't forget us like we've forgotten all of you.