did the family of the dead boy get paid for the work the dead boy did? | Consuelo Wise
did the family of the dead boy get paid for the work the
dead boy did?
how long had the dead boy worked?
how much had he cared for the things he did. move the plants,
feed the plants, water the plants, tend
to the plants
did the family of the dead boy get paid for the work the dead boy
did?
it was jagging into my head—the rocks and dirt and metal
what the machinery did
to the boy rocks pulled from the bed to make the bed soft to grow
the plants to make
the bed for the plants
soft,
the rocks the dead boy pulled, the rocks the dead boy lifted from the
bed to make the bed soft for the plants
bulbs with their shiny heads. kneading his hands into the dirt
to make the bed soft to find the last rocks to make the dirt soft for
the plants the iridescent limbs climbing from the heads. transplanting
the bulbs.
did the family of the dead boy get paid for the fields of dead &
for the flowers grown by the families
did the green fluttering down the backs of the men who work the
dead boys—did they give you the dead boys’ bodies, did they give you
us that field of blooming faces—back?
in my awake from the dream state I felt I could not move, could not
move or barely lift my head I kept hearing them, their voices
did the dead boy the dead boy the family did they
and when finally I decided to turn on the light
afloat in the room the stuff everywhere my books upturned
whose room whose things I’d been too far out
in the universe and the universe told me and I needed to ground
myself back into the bed into the room into the earth
so we lay there, me and my brother
in the soft dark soil
we lay there and together for once, we both
were
because that is how it feels
to be the sister of a dead boy
Consuelo Wise is a Guatemalan American poet and writer.
Cover image by Zachary Schomburg: photos of walls in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico, an area that is very flat. The horizon lines on theses walls mimic that flat horizon line on its landscape.
