Fernando Rafael Izaguirre, Jr.

LATITUDE

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.

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