FARMWORKER AS EXISTENTIAL QUANTIFIER
for J.H.
That one waters
his mortgaged field
& becomes the water.
Another drinks the water
dissolving into drills.
The quickest one coffins
into the trench with his wife.
They are there so long
a plow gives them last rites.
A child is born on that
hottest day in mid-strike.
He swallows the crop
& waddles away a god.
Without any fuel workers
sell their own steam.
Their labors are packed
into a papoose & carried
off. One of them pours
the water onto his rags.
The rest of them catch
the wringed water
in their mouths.
RODNEY GOMEZ Rodney Gomez is a Canto Mundo fellow. His poetry has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Salt Hill, Barrow Street, Texas Poetry Review, and other journals and anthologies. He was an Associate Artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts and will be a writer-in-residence at the Santa Fe Art Institute in 2012. He works as a public transportation planner in Weslaco, Texas.