The Night I Walked Into Town
The night I walk into town
to meet my brother
I’m tripped up
by a car whose wheels rip
through a newspaper
along the white line
of the road.
The black bold
type is bleeding
I scream
but the bleeding doesn’t stop.
At the corner a man who hasn’t seen
water, food, gloved fingers
this cold, snow-blowing January
asks how many faces do I see
holding his chin up.
Twenty-five, I say
twenty-five thousand.
Naomi Ayala
from El Coro
University of Massachusetts Press, 1997