Morning Shooting

4:30 In bed when I hear an angry voice yell GO BACK TO YOUR OWN GODDAMN COUNTRY DIRTY MEXICAN wheels screech a door slams outside voice begs tor mercy then a scream on the street and boom! boom! a car squeals off leaving a second voice now jagged and weak, pleading ...help. Did you hear? Someone's shot! My wife Stacy rushes from the bedroom to the kitchen, draws her housecoat on dashes into the street and kneels under the streetlight in the neighbor's driveway where she lifts the Mexican's bloody body onto her lap; blood pools around him she tugs his arm, he groans stay awake, stay awake she orders blood puddles out from his thighs ladling out surfs from blown oft kneecaps that look like cantaloupe peelings on the cutting board. The shooting takes out the center of me, leaves pit-molds of two shotgun cartridges in the center of me smoldering with anger. This man was on his way to work his lunch sack still clutched in his hand. As I stare at him who like all of us journeyed undocumented from cosmic sunlit regions into earthling wombed-being hands, mouth and lips breast, ears, toes and hips. Like all of us he was all questions- Mother, what is that and that, his first sensual exploration into the world sparkt light-origins in his heart that brimmed sunflower seeds with brightness, asking what is that you said a chili pepper what is that in the bell tower you said a pigeon and in the sand-box sand between fingers you said soil and what is that feeling your lips on his cheek you said a kiss but to him it was hapPpiness and later as man when you ask him what is that he hugs you and says love. I call 911 and ask the police to call the ambulance but he answers, He's another gangbanger, let the bitch die my wife commands him to call threatens to report him and he says, the more they kill each other the better off we are. After they took the man away, lawns and bare trees study the crime scene to understand what imbues the dawn with sorrow darkening it with the feeling that it's harder to have hope- life hits black ice and spins out sometimes, I tell myself, but that doesn't mean we're lost, doesn't mean the spinning will never end. But it does no good, filled with anger, as I am, at those who believe in and practice violence, I drive to the foothills to hike, where my heart flares its nostrils quivering leaves pufing dust, as pairs of hundred-year-old cedars and piñon trees root in granite crevices and counsel me in patience. I have an overwhelming need to cry for that young man, tor me, for us so many young Chicanos line the cemetery rows, so many funeral gatherings daily! I'm sick of it! How my wife cradled the man's head in her lap breathed on his face it was going to be all right, her face under the streetlight smooth as the jade plant in our sunroom, her voice wind chimes softly declaring a belief in peace and forgiveness. The man in her arms, I saw as a school child cackling racket in shiny hallways clacking lockers. He grew wings his first day at school, scudded his chair-desk back anxious to let his words fly over the playground and perch on the merry-go-round. His heart's bell hinges grimaced from so much hard happiness -ringing, as he raced others to hopscotch under the shed or play kickball on the courts, dangle on monkey bars and yelp down dented slides. When I return from my hike the owners of the house have already hosed the blood away a contractor speaks with them on their plan to install a wall rimmed with knife blades to keep intruders from climbing over. School buses pick up kids the hour makes its rounds like a jailer and I feel we are all serving a sentence for the crime of indifference. Trump, you declare war on immigrants and women and children, all the while the same clichés and rhetoric spout from your mouth- What's the promise? What's the course? Who prospers? Who shares in the wealth? Whose triumph and whose victory? This day stands in infamy, stands crippled, stands on blown-off legs, stands blind and wounded, this day has no tongue for ordinary Americans, no ears or hands or jobs or homes, this day draws the curtain on light, locks the doors on the needy, burns books, left our dreams on the barbwire like a prisoner trying to escape his torturers, and the biblical prayers, condemnation of truth, trashing of gospels a day when angels fall from heaven, a day when wounds open in unborn hearts, a day when blessings from the lips of pastors are sins upon us all, a day of all-out launching of racism, a day when Christ went into hiding The long night begins.