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Federico's Ghost
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- The story is
- that whole families of
fruitpickers
- still crept between the
furrows
- of the field at dusk,
- when for reasons of whiskey or
whatever
- the cropduster plane sprayed
anyway,
- floating a pesticide drizzle
- over the pickers
- who thrashed like dark birds
- in a glistening white net,
- except for Federico,
- a skinny boy who stood apart
- in his own green row,
- and, knowing the pilot
- would not understand in
Spanish
- that he was the son of a
whore,
- instead jerked his arm
- and thrust an obscene finger.
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- The pilot understood.
- He circled the plane and
sprayed again,
- watching a fine gauze of
poison
- drift over the brown bodies
- that cowered and scurried on
the ground,
- and aiming for Federico,
- leaving the skin beneath his
shirt
- wet and blistered,
- but still pumping his finger
at the sky.
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- After Federico died,
- rumors at the labor camp
- told of tomatoes picked and
smashed at night,
- growers muttering of vandal
children
- or communists in camp,
- first threatening to call
Immigration,
- then promising every Sunday
off
- if only the smashing of
tomatoes would stop.
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- Still tomatoes were picked and
squashed
- in the dark,
- and the old women in camp
- said it was Federico,
- laboring after sundown
- to cool the burns on his arms,
- flinging tomatoes
- at the cropduster
- that hummed like a mosquito
- lost in his ear,
- and kept his soul awake.
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from
Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover's Hands
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