Unit 6: Part 2 Vocabulary

Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

I was seven when my father
took my hand like this,
and I did not hold that shard
between my fingers and think,
Metal that will bury me,
christen it Little Assassin,
Ore Going Deep for My Heart.

Sluggish by 9 pm, the hands
would slide along suddenly sharp paper,
and gather slits thinner than the crevices
of the skin, hidden.

We wove
ourselves into the terrain,
content to be a hummingbird’s target.

Small animals took refuge
against our bodies

A red-bearded preacher from the hills
with a wild look in his eyes
stood in the public square
at the playground’s edge
proclaiming he was sent by God
to save everyone of us,
even the little children.

“Repent, ye sinners!” he shouted,
waving his hand-lettered sign.

They never heard me steal
into the stairwell hall and climb
the ladder to the fresh night air.

Presiding over a formica counter,
plastic Mother and Child magnetized
to the top of an ancient register,
the heady mix of smells from the open bins
of dried codfish, the green plantains
hanging in stalks like votive offerings,
she is the Patroness of Exiles

all wanting the comfort
of spoken Spanish, to gaze upon the family portrait
of her plain wide face, her ample bosom
resting on her plump arms

but it would not satisfy
the hunger of the fragile old man lost in the folds
of his winter coat, who brings her lists of items
that he reads to her like poetry, or the others,
whose needs she must divine, conjuring up products
from places that now exist only in their hearts—
closed ports she must trade with.