Jose Guadalupf Posada depicts The Artistic Purgatory, Where The Skulls Of Artists And Craftsmen Lie
I remember scars on your arms
slender wrist to shoulder
burnt offerings to life
earned beneath a searing sun
while you picked chili peppers
their juice leaving blisters
on skin that had never known
the slightest blemish
you couldn’t even spare
the few cents it might have cost
to rent gloves from the farmer
you served in the fields
where your Mexican friends
sold their bodies for pennies
working the land
working things out in the soil
you did what it took to stay alive then
clearing what webbed your mind
though nothing lightened
whatever inscrutable burdens
lay buried in your heart
evening came
announced by the noise of gravel scattered
by the arrival of an ancient pickup truck
you climbed aboard with the others
off to an evening of Rosa’s tamales
gossip and laughter in her kitchen
then drinking with the men
and while everyone slept
you walked miles
to a gas station
where you paid a man a quarter
to use the shower
a sliver of scented bath soap
your small nod to who you used to be
later
when you tried to explain
fears stormed my mind
but never blinded me
to the wealth of what you learned
those two years you were a stranger
and I thought you hadn’t really gone that far
remembered long ago Irish roots
our ancestors who knew
what binds the soul to soil
as they toiled on land no longer their own
and buried what they could not bear
beneath.
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