DORIS DIFARNECIO
I heard the truck’s engine.
It was loud.
But not as loud as the wind.
A tornado wind!
I was in the back of the truck.
I was wearing Papa’s old army jacket,
big and soft, smelled like him,
the sweat from his travel,
the sweat from his work,
picking oranges and artichokes.
His jacket was alive with memories
of his labors and the sweat mixed in
with the sugar and tears of all those places.
The place by the tracks,
by the slaughterhouse,
at the edge of town:
places where nobody else would live.
We crossed a lot of borders in a truck.
Since before I was born.
Following the seasons,
the rhythms of vegetables, our masters;
little plants told us where to live and when,
and Papa listened and obeyed
and kept his mouth shut
and kept out of sight
and kept listening to the orders of the crops
and we traveled to their places
and did the work we had to do
to keep them alive
and keep America fed
and we obeyed the laws,
all the laws, we had to be careful.
And the truck was full of people that night:
a few strangers we didn’t know,
also migrants, also going north.
Papa stopped for them:
I don’t know why—
he never does that.
They all got into the truck with me
and Mama and Papa
and we drove north
and then the police followed us.
Papa wouldn’t stop.
Maybe the strangers in the truck were afraid.
They must have told him not to stop,
to go faster, and maybe he didn’t want
to look weak in their eyes
and we went faster, faster,
and the wind was louder and colder
and the truck’s engine was faint,
like it had left me behind . . .
and I was flying through the night air,
flying like a man-eating spirit,
flying with the demons and unlucky ghosts
of the freeway . . .
and the police wouldn’t go away;
they pushed Papa faster . . .
and Papa tried a U-turn . . .
and I remember flying into a storm.
When the storm ended,
my mama and papa were gone.
The storm had turned my family to rain.
And the rain fell to the earth.
They disappeared in the thirsty earth
so they could feed the plants
who ruled their lives. Gone.