Esteban Rodríguez

EL RÍO

   I.

Like a newborn   he emerges   crawls onto the riverbank   Because the moon deems itself holy   it
christens him offers a glow night ordained with its own agenda erases from his skin peeling       
off the afterbirth of mud water of starlight that leeched onto his shoulders neck In the
distance searchlights scythe the darkness Coyotes eat their young And as he crawls farther up        
hieroglyphs the earth with knees nails palms you don’t see him as your father don’t see him        
as the man whose silence shaped you growing up No Tonight he is just a figure a shadow  
joining other shadows that have crossed the river and that like your notion of a body pardoned     
of its soul wanders across the land searches for whatever brings him closer to atonement closure 

II.

Nightfall   And your father finds himself in a factory again   skulking   as the last of the river molts
from his skin   to the middle of the floor   where a row of headless scarecrows hangs on meat hooks  
sways like slaughtered pigs or like heretics made into examples displayed for the sinful the     
sinless He reaches up touches what's left of their legs and when the aisle ends he nears a table
filled with doll heads each blindfolded each a symbol he fails to understand wondering if the
gashes double as hieroglyphs or if there's a reason why some have their jaws crushed caved in     
hair matted   wires sprouting from the bottoms of their necks   programmed with a voice that recites
a sermon when he turns the switch and that he hears between the calls for repentance cry his    
name urge him to remove his clothes and to lie sprawled on the table wait as the babble 
continues for darkness to place coins on his eyes lips  

       III.

In this version   the river turns to concrete   and your father stops flailing   controls his arms again  
rises to his feet Like a creature about to enter extinction he walks this once-river until he comes
upon a building gray and windowless but framed around a door men just as crosshatched and
faceless as him step into And for you son observer writer absolved of exodus and
responsibility   the symbolism is easy   heavy-handed even   but stark enough to describe   detail  
depict with all your synonyms and to express into a scene where your father falls to his knees  
prays   aware the ground he believes in   will not always remain   

IV.

In each of us there’s a river   and though you want to believe your father when he tells you this  
you find nothing when you look   just a riverbed filled with parentheses of jawbones   ribs   with
mounds of shredded plastic   cardboard   clothes   and   each time you place yourself in the middle
of it   with a makeshift coffin   small and made of branches   twigs   or in some cases   when the
scene cradles dusk on the horizon   with teeth   millions of them   rotted   or fitted with silver caps  
or just as plain as the ones you begin pulling from your mouth   and which you hope   if the time
should come   your father will find   identify them as his son’s

V. 

Even in sleep   my father’s at the river’s edge   gazing   some nights   at the fires spiting darkness
on the other side   unsure if they’re signals   accidents   or warnings to him   and men like him   that
he shouldn’t cross   that if he does what awaits once he’s trudged miles of corpses and sagebrush  
is another river   this one wider   deeper   molded out of adjectives he’s never heard of   and which
could care less if he jumps in   dog-paddles against the current   and watches as the river extends  
swells until he can no longer see the bank   and he must turn back   or stay if his limbs grow numb  
accept the water that fills his mouth   the nothingness he prays he has the strength to wake up from 

VI.

River long gone   your father trudges a desert filled with suitcases   baby seats   abandoned sedans
and SUVs   until   days later   he stumbles on a cluster of tents   gazes   from behind half-buried
wagons and cow carcasses   at the parody of a baroness   barefoot   braless   gnawed turkey leg in
hand   She tears through its skin   Grease drips from her bearded jaw   and as she tosses the bone 
to a wake of buzzards chained together at the neck   a jester staggers into view   waves his bottle
like a wand   and attempts to conjure the presence of his troupe   to explain how in a dream once  
cast to a desert flanked by fences and wet pavement   suited figures around him drew a circle in
the sand   tossed in their passports   wallets   keys and wedding rings   whatever bore enough
meaning to leave an impression   and to compel the jester to place a hula hoop at their feet   and
watch as they stepped into it   ready to give up what they knew they’d never be

VII.

All summer it rains   and the river   burdened with garbage   corpses   bears descriptions of the
biblical   a flood your father’s been cast to the middle of thrashing   shouting   cursing God’s
version of justice   and realizing   as the sky above him swells   darkens   that this is punishment  
that he’ll drown and drift for days until his body washes up   and like any body sprawled on a bank  
he will be found   poked at   spoken to in a language of doubt   and dragged to a place where you  
eventually   can view your once-father   promise him to not suffer such fate 

VIII.

Because no one’s looking   a wall is built   and with nowhere else to go   the men who’ve yet to
scale it make the ground it casts its shadow on their home   As you walk amongst them   unsure
how you got here   or if any part of this is real   you find a man you believe to be your father   only
he doesn’t remember you   can’t recall how he crawled from the river once   staggered till dawn
rendered him reborn   or of the decades he spent on the other side of earth   knowing   as you know
now   that if he was caught   tried   expelled   the path leading back would not welcome his return