Eyes Peeled

This is a poem that I recently published in the High Plain Register.

Eyes Peeled

I cannot see it, really,
from my view atop the spud truck.
Just beyond Mercer’s Corner

and the ancient cottonwoods.
The panel truck shifts slowly like some fish net,
scooping cod from the sea.

Instead of fish, this net scoops up los hermanos
from the spud cellars, trucks, bunkhouses, unfit even for chinchillas.
Dust rises inevitably from the truck’s slow loathing

of those sin papeles—yet those important to the harvest.
Sometimes it is hard to get the gringos, those young dudes,
to heft the 33’ sprinkler pipe, often full

of silt water and carry it forty feet
through knee-high alfalfa, wet potato lines,
mosquitoes and horse flies licking blood,

and sweat oozing over day-old bites.
At night, Instead of returning home to Nintendo,
HBO, and a hot shower, the pulsating kind,

they saunter to the plywood shacks, tortillas de harina,
and another night of yearning for their casas, sus familias,
instead of sitting idly on their own veranda,

their queridas in the crook of their arms.
Now their eyes stay peeled for the panel truck,
picking up speed through the alfalfa field.