Four Poems (R. Joseph Rodríguez)
R. Joseph Rodríguez
She's Gone
My mother’s gone
to be among the women.
Sisters accompany her
in moments like these.
Father’s furies and fists
left her black and blue.
What’s she to do quarterless
in the Kroger parking lot?
The children cry and plead.
Father’s immune to them.
In fact, he’s plotting again
his next moves and torments.
My mother’s Lot’s mother.
She’s not alone in the world.
A long line of mothers sit
beside her and nod meekly.
On bare feet mother carries
souls to safer grounds.
Her work’s undone and due.
Watch her return and rise again.
Galut
at Tornillo
A chorus of citizens
quilts the children
under tents
in the cold.
The children wait
in cages
for mothers
and fathers moving
across continental plates.
Here arms outstretch,
far from Galilee
in the Chihuahuan Desert
winter and creosote.
The chorus rises—flor
y canto—for the children
coming home
at last
to be clothed
in familiar warmth
and love.
Self In 1985
Variation on a theme by Anne Sexton, 1928-1974
What is real?
I am a boy; I stand
with eyes that are brown and shining without heavy hurt or fall
upon some other timid yet haunting boys,
eyes that close, open, spin, and close.
Am I appropriately a boy? Kmart transfixed?
I have hair, raven black,
thin legs, lanky arms
and some resale clothes.
I study in a school
with twenty-six desks
two chalkboards, two windows,
three closed closets and one big door.
Many of you have come to this place.
There is a big desk,
(for the lead teacher)
a tiled floor,
windows that open to the playground and temporary buildings,
and rows of poor houses and crisscrossing streets.
Someone taunts me,
plants an open blow on my head,
What is it Antonio said afterward?
Someone adult pretends not to see nor feel with me—
I am alone among them—
or cast aside in another space.
They ignore me!
Their coy kindness? Their kindness is not real!
They keep me silent to their taunts
and their hurt.
What is real
to this fifth-grade boy
who should play, who should fit in,
should be boy-like in a wholesome school,
and have no evidence of other or pain?
But I would cry, too,
bound into existence and walls that
were once my uncles and aunts
if I could know then
and if I had the heart.
heartdrumming
happen
you to
if see
a
heart
in
this
poem
then
listen
to the
beating
half in
yours
too
k?
Copyright Credit: R. Joseph Rodríguez, “She's Gone," "Galut," "Self in 1985," and "heartdrumming" from Survival & Beyond, Issue 1 / Spring 2024 (Safe Passage, 2024). Copyright © 2024 by Safe Passage. Reprinted with the permission of the author.