Elsa
Edcouch
San Juan
Queen City
It began with measurements napkin sketches
of ideas for a driveway Then began the work
after work the sense that when my father mixed
and poured cement he had every right to evenness
that after decades of calling this soil home he should
no longer have to park his truck on unsteady
ground on that foundation where our house was built
and where before the driveway was close
to being done he’d begin building something else extend
the porch fix the roof put up the frame
for a kind of garage where he could put his tools
or where he could rest hang out not have to go
inside the house not have to explain to my mom why
the driveway was the way it was and how it took time
that he couldn’t rush that like anything good he had to let
his projects sit simmer take on lives of their own
and become months or years down the road a thing
he could look at the way I imagined God looked at us
perfect despite its flaws
He knows you have no interest that cars
and engines fifteen years and counting
are still not your thing And yet he brings you along
makes you get off says it’s good to get
some sun But here in the yard of your father’s friend’s
house you don’t care for vitamin D care less
for the work that begins on your father’s truck
or for the way your father turns around
as if you’d have a change of heart be willing to learn
and lend a hand No here in some colonia
whose name you can’t pronounce you care only for
the packs of dogs those strays that lay on
the surrounding yards or near the potholes on the street
where the asphalt ash-colored and lumpy
singes their matted and hairless bodies and gives them
a warmth you try to give when you walk near
kneel and thrust out your hand as if they’d understand
the emptiness in your palm as if you alone
could make their suffering disappear
Like a mushroom cloud smoke billows
from the hood and you think it’s too early
that trucks shouldn’t break down in the morning
that neither you nor your father deserve
this hassle nor this humidity that begins to turn
your flesh into putty and that prompts you
even before your father opens the hood studies
the engine to walk away to try to find a reason
behind such luck in the sky horizon in the fields
where you see what you first think
are scarecrows then realize are workers men picking
cabbage or a crop you’ve never heard of
and that for all you know has already rotted
is mush when they put it in their baskets
and will yield less than they’d hope to earn
or just enough to face their families
with a sense of pride and guilt with that look you know
your father will give your mother at home
that promise to find a way to make things work
And why not believe it why not imagine that as Diaz
surveyed the landscape – even if he didn’t –
he saw not just dirt sagebrush not just heat singed on acres
and acres of desolation but its potential the beauty
he would help instill upon it the pride in naming a piece of land
after his wife because why see bushes and mirages
and not think of your love And why not believe in this invented
truth in the way you as a child once believed
that the fort you were building with bricks and branches
was your own country Estebanland Estebanstonia
that Estebanstan you refused to desert adamant that you
wouldn’t leave the backyard that as night
descended and the owls surveyed the mess you made
you would sleep in your new home love
what nothing in this world but you could have named
Esteban Rodríguez is the author of the Dusk & Dust (Hub City Press, 2019) and the micro-chapbook Soledad (Ghost City Press, 2019). His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Gettysburg Review, New England Review, Shenandoah, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. He is the Interviews Editor at the EcoTheo Review and is a regular reviews contributor at PANK and Heavy Feather Review. He lives with his family and teaches in Austin, Texas.
