Edwin Wilson Rivera

A grim mechanical, savage against sable dusk,

patched and gritty clothing like tin gone to rust—;

eyes half-shut in the sucking cyanic dust.

A hash of flies whirl above the red and milling

crust, sun-blaze an angry sacrament; crumbles

of flung dirt leap from mounds, then gust.

(Adios caimito y ceiba, adios zapote, adios, adios—

in this deserted fastness, only clay and dun.)

He leans on the helve of his hacking tool;

his toothless pequeñita strikes a shovel into the dirt.

He locates a hand, a torso, a loamy foot—

then tosses the parts like meat to burn.

This campesino who seeds the earth with flesh

has guised himself as a reverend of death.

Murder has become machine, banal:

La Familia Michoacana is in his town.

He swipes his brow with a ragged cloth,

hacks into the bitten dust.

He widens this berth for his beloved’s corpse.