My People!

I learn to love them from up here, through concrete.
La llorona out on the avenues crying for everyone’s
babies, for all the mothers, including River, grinded
 
to their knees and dust for the splendid City. Still,
we must sweep the dust, gather our own bodies like
messes of sand and memory. Who will excavate
 
our clodded bodies from the banks, pick embedded
stones and sticks from the raw scrapes oozing
our backs and thighs? Who will call us back
 
to the water, wash the dirt from our eyes and hair?
Can anybody uncrush our hands, reshape them
from clay, let us touch one another’s faces again?
 
Has anyone answered? We’ve been crying out
for 600 years—

Tengo sed.