SPANISH EDDY

His mother beats stone
Over raw corn,
Pounds and shapes with water
A carpet of maize for Sunday’s visit. I’ve seen
Her careful hair and perfect hands
Turn prehistoric behind those bones
The way a butterfly steps out of the shell
Sand falls from her palm
And passes one day into another.
Her voice sings in a with a gentle madness
The stories that fall down around her;
Inside, Eddy throbs, looking for a way out.
Dark eyes point his fortune North
Beyond the river where smoky cities frail
Under an afternoon sun,
High on slushier to a place
Where she must learn to keep,
What everyone leaves behind

At the border she sadness with silence,
Gathering last straws of memory
From the pockets of her eyes.
She waits in the shadows like a question mark.
When she answers, two teeth bite down
On a clothesline of dead children
Strung through a backyard of fences
From Guadalajara to east L. A.
—a jungle of concrete and glass.
Luck finds its own fortunes,
She knows this, expecting to miracle to arrive n the wings of angels.
Dawn sparkles from the East; the Sierra’s would rather sleep.
Eddy waterfalls into America
On the table of a flat bed truck, in front of a “Flying A”
On promises written in sand on a pathway of empty eyes
To “Hall’s Diner and Gas Stop”–
Eddy whispers among the heads of cabbage:

“Nightmares, Man.
Nightmares.”