ate my first fig
from the hand of a man who escaped his country
by swimming through the night
and maybe
never said more than
five words to me
at once but gave me
figs and a man on his way
to work hops twice
to reach at last his
fig which he smiles at and calls
baby, câmere baby ,
he says and blows a kiss
to the tree which everyone knows
cannot grow this far north
being Mediterranean
and favoring the rocky, sun-baked soils
of Jordan and Sicily
but no one told the fig tree
or the immigrants
there is a way
the fig tree grows
in groves it wants,
it seems, to hold us,
yes I am anthropomorphizing
goddammit I have twice
in the last thirty seconds
rubbed my sweaty
forearm into someone elseâs
sweaty shoulder
gleeful eating out of each otherâs hands
on Christian St.
in Philadelphia a city like most
which has murdered its own
people
this is true
we are feeding each other
from a tree
at the corner of Christian and 9th
strangers maybe
never again.
from The American Poetry Review
EUGENE GLORIA
----
Liner Notes for Monk
âMonkâs Moodâ [false start]
I had gotten off the bus too soon for my stop and so I had to walk a few
blocks in order to gain my bearings. Thelonious Monk said, âItâs always night/ or we
wouldnât need light.â I read this in an essay. I wanted to have a conversation
with someone to lighten my load. I remember seeing a woman disembarking from the next
bus. Our gazes locked for a long second. [ It is always night wherever you go. ]
âCrepuscule with Nellieâ [breakdown]
[ Monk continues alone and quiet .] Northward leads to the river southward back to my hotel
room. An entire week had gone by and I hadnât exchanged seven words with another
human. The sound of words directed at me would feel like a hand on my shoulder, an arm
brushing against my skin. It is always night when silence overcomes me, silence opening up
within me like a wound. Black keys, Iâve been told, have an ominous, mysterious sound.
âMisteriosoâ
[ Monk conversing with water .] What we end up making, whether itâs something we do by
ourselves or with others is always a form of conversation. My presence is solid, but
others see me as a fishing weir, a foamless Mister So-
and-So, a scavenger for anything that would flatter his eyes. What I want is a garden that will not perish, a bed of imperial, white peonies.
from Tongue
RAY GONZALEZ
----
One El Paso, Two El Paso
Awake in the desert to the sound of calling.
Must be the mountain, I thought.
The violent border, I assumed, though the boundary
line between the living and the dead was erased years ago.
Awake in the sand, I feared, old shoes decorated with
razor wire, a heaven of light on the peaks.
Must be time to get up, I assumed. Parked outside,
Border Patrol vehicles, I had to choose.
Awake to follow immigration shadows vanishing inside
American walls, river drownings counted as they cross,
Maria Salinasâs body dragged out, her mud costume
pasted with plastic bottles and crushed beer cans,
black water flowing to bless her in her sleep.
Must be the roar of illegal death, I decided,
a way out of the current, though satellite maps never
show the brown veins of the concrete channel.
Awake in the arroyo of a mushroom cloud, I choke,
1945 explosion in the sand, eternal radioactive wind,
the end of one war mutating the border into another
that also requires fatal skills of young men because few
dream the atomic bomb gave birth in La Jornada,
historic trail behind the mountain realigned, then cut
off from El Paso, the town surrounded with barbed
wire, the new century kissing car bombs, drug cartels,
massacres across the river, hundreds shot in ambushes
and neighborhood soccer games that always score.
Wake up, I thought, look south to the last cathedral
in Juarez before its exploding bricks hurtle this way.
Make the sign of the cross, open your