“Sites”
Roadside weeds, thick and green,
That swamp feel of the United States’ southern and east coasts,
Swampy, humid, so rich, so hot ….
Border rancher- farmer hat, wide -
Tells me about 35 years in
Utah and Nebraska with sugar beets.
His son, baseball cap, tells me
That he did that with his dad,
And his kids don’t, no harvests for them ….
Mexican, jobless, comes back,
With a Mississippi white wife and two light kids.
Nothing going on, and then the phone rings:
“Come back to Mississippi. The refinery wants you back.”
Turn around, Mexican man and Mississippi family,
Rolling back along the swamps ….
“Circles”
…looking for the moon,
Only the Burger King yellow glows ….
…recall the song,
The teens come home,
Thinking it is night
And they are seeing the moon.
But one says it is the sun.
They’ve been out late ….
“Years Built”
“He was deported,
But we’ve been married
Thirty five years,
So I moved to Mexico
With him, and drive back and forth
Six days a week to work.
“I have a fast pass
For the bridge, and am
Always adding money to it.
“I like him.
I don’t like living in Matamoros.
We keep to ourselves,
“I want to live in San Luis Potosi
When I stop my job in the cleaners,
And he stops with auto parts.
“Got to go.”
Eugene “Gene” Novogrodsky, mid summer 2011
