![]() ![]() The death warrant hate has made of their skin. Who walk the wrong roads, which is any road My brother was a boy in the time of fistfights How that was a black boy’s biggest transgression,Īnd so far from fatal it feels an un-American dream. Snuck from mom’s handbag or dad’s wallet. On Aunty Marge’s corner to buy contraband To conscienceless men with guns and conviction.Īnd legs, how many errands he ran on them Where a black boy’s being calls like crosshairs Tonight I’m grateful he slaked his thirst His favorite shirt until mom disappeared it. Was staticked with approaching adulthood, It’s obvious I must avoid the eulogy that comes after talking about my brother’s death because it’ll haunt me, his death, it will follow me and take me too, and I want to sleep tonight. We all have this disease, a black dove chewing on its feathers inside of a country inside us, trapped in the cave of us, we rage or corridos Chihuahuenses or a dying ensemble, but even if the song kills me I won’t set it free. Memory still doesn’t strike a guitar string, the tíos are turning in their grave, while abuelita twists her mouth so we don’t see her teethless. ![]() Instead she hardens, tells me of the desert roses tumbling across the desert, how just like us they have razor sharp petals as armor on their body from tumbling aimlessly for years. This time mami won’t become one million doves in the driver seat while she sings to Jenni Rivera as we drive through the sandstorm. Songs will remain unsung, the diaphragm, a cheap staircase, not even lullabies can squeeze out, my voice box sealed, a better state line than the Mexican-American border. The tone will always be off, a crooked meteor slicing what’s left of the sky. My brother isn’t coming back from the dead and I won’t fix my scale. Instead I hoax them to sit perched, their black wings all slick and crow-like while I drag the weight of Mexican unsung mourning in choir. They want to abandon and find a soft rock to lay their head on, a voice, an empty water jug, a song, the striking pain of a windless and deserted desert or a revolver or drugs or gang affiliations. ![]() I’ve avoided opening my throat in fear the dead would rise, walk out of me, leave me emptier after their fleeting, and still get deported back into the abyss they climbed from. ![]()
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