On December 21st, 2015
my wife went grocery shopping
to buy pork, hominy, garnishes, and red chiles
necessary to make pozole rojo.
She’s late, I thought.
I ignored my consciousness
and drove my focus toward
the news on Univision.
ICE arrested hundreds that day:
brown faces scraped asphalt,
brown faces became one side faces,
brown faces rendered to a toneless piano.
“Esto está mal!” said a man on tv.
There was imbalance in my brain,
a stool with a broken leg
no customer sits in
yet remains part of the bar.
The washer finished its cycle;
I put collar shirts and kaki jeans
in the dryer but
I didn’t hear it
tumbling like a barrel machine
inside a warehouse since this morning.
A car alarm swarmed the neighborhood;
I grabbed my skull,
unhinged the image of my wife
never making it safely through the door.
But when she did (gracias a dios)
I cloaked my arms around her waist,
kissed her hair, and thought of
buses dragging children away
from their parents during a downpour.