On the Search for Good Chile and a Bag of Ice



Listen to what we consume at the 7 am hour—
If not fried pig mixed with egg, then cleverly pickled
Slivers of cactus paddle aside the innards of cows stewed
Amid the reddest of the red liquids. I am steady now
In how I squeeze a .$79 feast into my esophagus
Into fuel for a day’s toil. Steady yet rambunctious in
Squirting seeds from plastic containers of the greenest
Serranos, and it’s this acquired joy:
the nicest chile punching the throat followed by
gulps upon gulps of Big Red, and is it too late to
wake this eyelid, too late once the seeds have
lost their own vesicles and the chicharron has found
its way off my plate? I am worthy. A bag of it
melts in the bed of my truck, too earnest to flee.
The asphalt on Fredricksburg wrinkles (unwilling, unworthy glow),
beneath the weight of a squinty sun and tire treads that
push and propel ice toward upper deck freeways,
high rises and casitas in other sides of the wide lens
this place is known to harbor amongst its Westside
cache of nopalitos, menudo and Big Red.