New Jersey Blues

After Lena Khalaf Tuffaha and 070 Shake

 
I won’t say more than I can
promise: apples, skin rot, soft

grass, fear. America
will rename you I won’t

say what I can’t pronounce:
sfogliatella y conchas soaking

crumby in your midnight
coffee. I won’t say goodbye

the right way to Nani or your Mami
I won’t say any more about the looks

you want to forget you’ve gotten
in my hometown. I won’t say

more than I can promise:
behind the house while America sleeps

a slow owl watches you, the air is cut
with manure, madrugada sounds

as cold as Eden
on the ears. I won’t say

your name, the onioned English
on my breath a swear.

I won’t say the K’iche’ word
for home that neither of us know.

I won’t say that we are no one
when our shadows lurk like giants

around the state line, looking backward
to the diners and their righteous

blaze of open signs and red leather.