Poem: Groceries
On Christmas Eve in Yakima, Washington, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers kidnapped a man in a Walmart parking lot, stealing the groceries he bought for his family for themselves.
They snatched him
taking the groceries
home.
Egg cartons burst,
white shells on dark asphalt,
road kill outside Walmart.
In the desert,
camps rise.
steel and concrete
flower in the arid sand.
Daddy, is that where they keep you ?
Will the stars over Arizona or Texas
carry a message to you?
I scour the skies
as if I could find you
in the chains of constellations.
When I was a child, milk cartons
bore the faces of missing children.
You told me to beware of strangers.
Your words were a warning.
Now screaming children are the warning—
for their parents
pulled from cars by men in masks,
smashed windows,
knees on their necks.
Cameras flare red. Rubber bullets cut—
the body,
the cold,
the snow.
We sit hungry, curtains drawn,
lights dimmed to a whisper.
No milk on the Formica table.
Because papi was snatched
at a parking lot,
Carrying the groceries
He bought for us—
su familia.
Home.
Shush.
They’re here again, Mom.
No hables más, hijo.
Silencio.
On Christmas Eve in Yakima, Washington, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers (ICE) kidnapped a man in a Walmart parking lot, stealing the groceries he bought for his family for themselves. When I was a child, my father worked late evenings driving a taxi in NYC. My mother often asked him to pick up milk for us for the morning breakfast. This poem draws on that mundane experience and combines it with the abduction of an immigrant father and the looting of his groceries by ICE agents.