STAMPEDE
You don’t know this horse.
That what you love most doesn’t
have a name, and runs wild.
Once overcome by your guilt you
slept in an empty field over the hill
naked and hungry, committed the cold to
memory how it bit into your body
one mouthful at a time. That
night all the small animals you’d
buried in a shoebox, came
alive. Told yourself, don’t be afraid.
I am no longer that man.
Laid your head on the dirt
watching as the grass begin to trill
hearing for the first time
the beating in your chest—the
wild animal beginning to gallop.
ANTIPODE II
Miles from here, in a field of cane there hangs
a scarecrow
that resembles so closely a man that man could be
mistaken
for your father. Or no one. Just the river crosser who
for pesos
takes you, asking always, “why have you come back?”
In the field,
beside the river, one summer, your father macheted
through the stalks
to place on your tongue the first sweet thing
you remember tasting.
The river so still now it looks as though the world
is upside down.
You’ve come here because what you’ve dragged
on that tow rope
with no where to anchor, thinking you were
a better man
than him—house to house, city to city
—is a fiery ember,
that finally, in a field of cane, will blaze into dawn.
A CantoMundo fellow, Ángel García’s work has been included in the American Poetry Review, Miramar, Verdad Magazine, and The Acentos Review. He currently lives in Los Angeles, CA and is completing his first collection of poetry.
