Bodega | Passing Through,

“A forest ranger had found them eating deer meat and arrested them.
They did not want to tell him that the deer was dead when found.”
-Reies López Tijerina

I can’t help but count the dead
white-tailed deer collecting along the side

of the highway on the way to my parents’
house for Thanksgiving dinner

Imagining the night walk & sudden fury,
having to dash across la tierra,

a once uncharted expanse of brown & pine & layered
silhouettes of black, which have paled

& reanimated into this An interrupted instinct,
so flat and open, flayed by the prospect

of unlimited mobility Por los anglos, the interstate
is a manifestation of the prosperity

of a unified people Sketched in 1956, lines
pump traffic as veins,

restoring a gutted geography,
strung together

by the undying thread of collective pride
In a blur, there is nothing

but carnage collecting maggots Hungry,
I feast & squirm

around a table, where warmth escapes
around corners of white

paper napkins stretched across steamy meats
& wilted greens

110 – November 2021

By Tano Rubio

Passing Through,