Machismo

Octavio Quintanilla

Now we face, brother,
the animal that haunted us
since childhood. It lives and wants
to live. It will find a path out
of the grassland. Let's give it
a chance to get lost in the distance
from where we emerge.
Don't take the burden of its life.
It weighs more than the slaughterhouses
we can't forget. Our father
worked there too,
and he was not a happy man.
So many lives he left undone.
For him, there was no end
to the cleaning of blood.

I still hear the other children
calling us back to our games.
They stretch their necks
to see which one of us carries
the corpse. If anyone asks why
our hands are empty,
let us point to the child
we leave behind in dust.