My Father’s Seed Has Spilt atop My Fist



By the time the feet stagger, the wall has surrendered its stars
And all its salt, and the eyes have squeezed out several thousand
miserable things, which like tall sentinels have amassed
on the floorboards and nails to watch me
Put my fist through shit, disassemble, grunt—
As my father has done,
As his father had done,
As all the men of my family have done
In those times when the world crumbles and life does not go our way;
And where the glass of the hall slices the tender muscle of the hand
With which I learned to draw watchtowers and payasitos and to throw good hooks
and other chingazos, a tiny heart the width of a chayote seed now glows.