Self-Portrait In The Cotton Fields

You were chasing the wind
around the fields of cotton,
throwing rocks at it,

the wind ran this way and that
trying to make you miss
but you hit him at least twice,

his forehead begin to swell
and he dipped a shoulder in pain.
Soon it disappeared

and you went back to picking cotton,
fourteen-year-old Chicano punk
sent by the grandparents

from the barrio to Don Urias’s land, the cotton
replaced since then by a manufacturing plant
that spits out metal parts

and the wind sweeps by
looking in vain
for that rock-throwing sin verguenza.




sin verguenza: shameless one ( :mostly uttered
half seriously, half jokingly: )