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Heart of Hunger
- Smuggled in boxcars through fields of dark morning,
- tied to bundles at railroad crossings,
- the brown grain of faces dissolved in bus station dim,
- immigrants: mexicano, dominicano,
- guatemalteco, puertorriqueño, orphans and travelers,
- refused permission to use gas station toilets,
- beaten for a beer in unseen towns with white porches,
- or evaporated without a tombstone in the peaceful grass,
- a
centipede of hands moving,
- hands clutching infants that grieve,
- fingers to the crucifix,
- hands that labor.
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- Long past backroads paved with solitude,
- hands in the thousands reach for the crop-ground
together,
- the countless roots of a tree lightning-torn,
- capillaries running to a heart of hunger,
- tobaccopicker, grapepicker, lettucepicker.
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- Obscured in the towering white clouds of cities in
winter,
- thousands are bowing to assembly lines,
- frenzied in kitchens and sweatshops,
- mopping the vomit of others' children,
- leaning into the iron's steam
- and the steel mill glowing.
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- Yet there is a pilgrimage,
- a
history straining its arms and legs,
- an inexorable striving,
- shouting in Spanish
- at the police of city jails
- and border checkpoints,
- mexicano, dominicano,
- guatemalteco, puertorriqueño,
- fishermen wading into the North American gloom
- to pull a fierce gasping life
- from the polluted current.
from
The Immigrant Iceboy's Bolero |
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