Those Seventy-Two Bodies Belong to Us

You novelize a route with flesh dumped at the ranch, can’t backtrack

the courage of miles we traversed in the dark, on a sighing speedboat,

through jungles that spat only shoes, calzones, bodies twisted

as guitarras when there’s no grito left in them to pluck. Back home,

we priested our mornings with sun-dried sombreros, communed

with our ghosts & had no wish to sacrifice our bellies, our terneros,

our Consuelos. With wings from acero, we’d crash latitudinal 
objections,

mystify Bengay on the mouths of our map-torn feet, pay no heed

to grief’s ambidextrous strophes. If we choked on our own blood

we harpooned optimism. But when the vans deadlocked our 
pilgrimage

we knew our shadows had crumbed the anesthetic vultures.

They pressed their loaded beaks upon our backs until our knees bent

sour orange. One asked if we served the enemy, but we took enemy

to mean a seed that sits quietly underfoot, abashed to vestibule

the grating sun. Blindfolded, we faced the gloom volcanoes

of their mothers. How those mothers might’ve screamed like ours

in their tortured independence: bloody thunder in the brown-starched

symphonies, a wind that howled & shoved its thumbs through feral lands

probing for judgment or commiseration. Chingado god that copycatted

these legs from monotony. Chingado god that hewed our wrists,

a pair of stems to strap behind our wrested boots & jeans. Whoever

supplied a plea to that deviant afternoon’s rationed blessings

neglected to add chile, sazón, a nosegay of tortillas to the long road.

Mothers who’ve come to reclaim our tongues in the dirt: remind us

of the braids in the phrasings of our dreams before we vanished. Pat

the ground for the bodkinned orchids. Wasn’t it yesterday we were

siphoning forecasts with our fingers roving on the table? Or caught

your chests pain-leavened & stilled them with the rumpus of our hopes?