—Eduardo C. Corral
Seventy-five years ago on the Jornada del Muerto
who didn’t surrender to its flat surly wonders and silent
skies brightened by a flash, the grotesque salutation of
white privilege exercised by seeming chemical fanatics
addicted to the experimental drug of trial and error?
The next time it rained blackened sludge flowed through the
arroyos from the burn scar for days after and after and nothing
past after, the fallout became God’s undiscovered country
and the next time it rained the children were drawn closer
and played in the playas, it was rarified, curative, the lightning’s
jagged scars healed almost simultaneously, earth’s pulse
quickened with each feral tear. If I’m still enough in
this world I become borderline intoxicated, its mysteries
supply enough surprise endings to keep my captive eyes
buried in the heavens, no escaping its incontinence,
its virtuosity.
stares into a partial eclipse of the sun, listens to outlaw
country, practices the dark arts of separation and
detention. The mother says, espanto! The dread of this
something is the something after. He replies speak English.
Each badge absorbs its own uncanny power, as an object it
reels in the mad language of its country, as a mirror
it deflects the rest of humanity. The most famous northern
jaguar, El Guapo, crosses back and forth at will through these
almost extinct El Paso motel rooms a rain-splotched ghost.
The stars sizzle and execute or begat other stars while a rare
zephyr after midnight gently palpates the earth to sleep.
children across the river at first light. A father’s bone crucifix,
his daughter holds her magic rock, her mother’s photo. The
journey is all dreams and shadows, a raindrop reaches its
reflection in the river and disappears, no escaping
where they come from or where they’re going.
