 This poem is called 2017. Heaven like warm rain and a mother's breast left unattended. They think we hide knives and harm in our hair and arms when they are filled with flowers and toy trains. How many black boys and girls have died this year? Gone missing. I saw a bird with a torn wing in the park today when the ranger came to put it down. A small cardboard box is littered with pink and gray graffiti that wasn't asked to be painted there. I inhale spray paint with an inhaler, and maybe one day my children too can breathe. This next poem is called Marianne's Son. This is how she taught you to survive in the world that was to come. Take a rifle and point it at a deer. Its eyes are on the side of its head so that it can see people like you at all times. Wait patiently among the brush and the leaves like you are waiting for some sort of blessing. Shoot the deer you eye in its neck. Watch it dash under branches and thorns into a thicket where it will bleed out. She teaches you how to skin, carve, and peel. This is all for survival. The hide covers while the meat sustains while the bones support. This is what she will teach you 100 times over until you become a man. The man she wants you to be with pistol and suit and steel. She says you inherited your father's gun. Never be afraid to use it. I promised myself I wouldn't write a poem for after the election, but when I stepped out into the world and countless white people with Priests told me how their day-to-day life was at risk and how they were going to be killed in this new administration. I responded with this, conversations for the day after the election. It's not that it needs to be discussed, it's always been spoken of, it's always been felt. I've seen my blood smeared down the alleyways, hanging from the Joshua Tree, asking permissions for a simple song, told no and no, from the time when I could walk with chubby legs to now when my legs are tired and can no longer run. It is November, it is cold, my hands are trembling like the bones in sinew underground. Mother took me to the lake when I was 12, gave me a spade, took it away, said, dig with your hands, deep holes must be dug to find the water underground. Boy, me digs till my hands blister, my hands callous, forcing me into a man. I dig until I reach the water underground. It is black, it smells like iron, it is our blood. This is called American Sun, Sequence 10. Do you remember walking down the hood, throwing signs to the homies, knowing who was down and who was down? The city you lived in is leaving. Cardboard boxes filled with street roses and carnations. Grams, vintage china wrapped in newspaper. Who was it that made you move? The city you lived in is now gone. Pale moons in the streets and alleys, a smiling, apart tide drinking an IPA. A dog in the street gets hit by a car and no one bats an eye. Where are you going and where have you been? I wouldn't be a good Latino boy if I didn't have a mama poem in here. So this is to my mom and to all moms and to all people who don't want to be moms. This is called an imperfect tamale. Mother needs the dough, says a silent prayer. Thank you, hate. Thank you, rage. Mother fills the tamales with queso, rajas, carne, dulce, amor. The hate and rage she carries in her heart. Mother removes the tamales from direct fire, leaving them cooked on the inside. Masa, still mushy on the outside. Mother, who was the original master of death, she had dinner with Santa Muerte at the border and she killed him at his own dinner table. Mother instructs me to place my imperfect tamales on an open flame to watch the leaves char, the masa cook to perfection, hard on the outside the same way mother instructs me to be. This is called anti-narrative. Let's imagine that the world is pure where there is less speculation, less bodies buried at the borders and less suns hanging from trees. Imagine there are seats at the table for boys that look like me and upward mobility is indeed tied to accomplishments where the family mausoleum is empty and all rooms, including yours, have windows. This is called American Sun Sequence 15. Like a shotgun shell full of salt, like generous immortality, this is the recollection of your childhood where the white boys took your toy, spat in your face, called you a spick and your mother killed their mothers to remind them that you were the chosen king. She said, you inherited your father's gun, never be afraid to use it. Her last name you carried, like a gun held tightly to your heart, querido American son. So this is a very short story. This is called a river. The group of migrants stare at the river in front of them after walking for nine days. They have arrived at the last leg of the journey in Mexico. If they crossed this river, they would be in the United States. A van was promised to meet the group two miles out. The rough equivalent of $1,200 ahead promises a migrant passage into the cold north. The coyote told them that there would be a river. When someone pays to go north, they imagine the obstacle called the river that is something that can be crossed easily. This is rarely the case. With an average width of a quarter of a mile and depths that range from four feet to 60, the river is unpredictable and many have drowned. The coyote calls for the group of people to prepare to cross. He has done this many times in the past. Those who can swim help those who can't. Take all your clothes off and hold them above your head like this. Watch to keep them dry. Nothing says wet back more than wet clothes. The coyote knows how to swim. He learned swimming in an American high school and was on the varsity swim team. Today, he will help no one swim across. There is an older woman. She is in her 60s and is going north to be with her sons. She misses them and has grandchildren that she has never seen. She knows how to swim. Her father's father was a sailor and he taught her how to swim. She is strong. Her shoulders tone from years of work. Her hands are larger than any man, showing that she knows how to tell the land. Her eyes are warm but tired. These are the eyes of a mother. With her is a small girl. This is her daughter, but not her daughter. This girl's mother died two days into the journey. They cannot send her back. No one wants to take her and she would die if they left her. The old woman tells herself, my son will understand. She assures herself that her son will accept this girl as a new sister. The migrants look at the river and they fear it. It is dark water and no one can see the bottom to gauge the depth. Move the coyote orders the naked people. We can't swim a man speaking for the group replies in shame. No one here can swim. The coyote asks with disgust in his voice at the group. He moves his head in the direction of each person to get an answer. Everyone looks away or looks down. The inability to look him in the eyes or answer. The older woman announces proudly, I can swim. The coyote laughs, and what will you do, viejita? Will you carry all these people across? If I must, she says. She's naked and she's cold and it is dark. And why would you do that, viejita? The coyote asks. I have a daughter, but today all these people can be my children. And you would do that? Yes, I would. The old woman swims across with her daughter that is not her daughter. The little girl holds her clothes in the air as the old woman swims across to the other side. She swims back and one by one ferries the other people across. Each one holding their clothing in the air. Every exchange of a new person is a new exchange of a human heart. She takes the last migrant across to the United States side of the border, swims back to Mexico, stands up, looks the coyote in the eye, and says, whenever you are ready, I will help you swim across as well. Thank you.