Photos of Mexico

by Ceo Rourke

Zapata in spring:
voluntouring,
building, sifting stones
//in sticky Baja heat.

We took photos of dusty workers
exiting the old school bus after
a strenuous day in the strawberry fields:
red-rimmed eyes resolute,
hands hard, pesticide raw,
//tired hopes carried home.

Our leader said
“suffer like martyrs”
relishing in our torture,
not knowing that
invented pain
//is a wicked wish.

… supermarket strawberries
will never again taste sweet
their supernatural red
pesticide raw
   on our tongues …

We never took a photo
of the small, naked boy:
feeling powerful and large,
signalling the big truck
full of concrete block
to back up,
//grabbed by his mother to safety.

But his image is burned
into our soft brains;
the building we made
from our own sweat,
so much grander
//than his own.

We remember the turkey: scrawny,
tied to the battered fence
day after day. We named it,
//in our naive way of naming pets.

On the last day they fed us
supper at the church
from what little they had.
Then with the one village camera,
took a picture of us eating
turkey and hot spice,
our privileged faces
flushed like buzzards
//eating crow.