“Un Tintero,” Inkwell

              Anger is the other person inside

                            mi garganta, my throat.

                            The mouth’s mouth is the deepest.

Rage is the homeless boy fallen down a well.

Shout down and he will echo back.

                                          La lengua, tongue.

How long have you been down there?

                            Subterráneo, underground.

The letters of Cortés are difficult to read,

                            on each page a horse dies.

The lord of the city lives homeless in a canoe.

Hundreds of natives are speared.

              Another town is burned alive

              with all its caged creatures.

On each page the people appear to walk

                                                        over their dead.

La tierra estercolada, the earth fertilized,

spreads a cloth whose pattern repeats.

                            On each page the future arrives

on a raft woven of snakes.

              Over and over, the design obliterates.

Never does he say this was their home we took.