From the depth of need and despair, people can work together, can organize themselves to solve their own problems and fill their own needs with dignity and strength. They must learn to think and act for themselves — and be free.
Cesar Chavez

Trabajo
by Rachelle Linda Escamilla

It is hard to live in the triangle tip, the last
bight before the pass through the quien
sabe mountain range, before nomansland.

Here      my family’s lowincomehome
below the tooth water tower,
Here my father’s white
picket fence hides our mudcolored bodies.
He tends his chile, cilantro and nopales,
in the crook of his caramel elbow he rubs
cilantro to release the sharp green

How to tell        him he may not find
work at forty seven beat from the sun, so so
young,        years climbing up ladders
plucking windows and planting them in the
gold mine of mansions the pictures he would
take! The houses so so so!

He guards our house with his tattered flag
checks the creaks in the fence, fills the holes
from snakes, raccoons,      the stray dogs.
Runs his fingers ‘round the edges of our windows
his expertise noticing problem areas, screen needs,
places      where work

rachelle [linda] escamilla is a three time james phelan literary award winner, the recipient of the dorrit sibley poetry prize, the marjorie mclaughlin folendorf literary scholarship and the virginia de arujo academy of american poets prize. her work can be found in 580 split, cavemoonpress broken circles, the villiage pariah, la bloga and hinchas de poesia. she lives in hollister, ca with her husband, dogs, and a house-bunny named melbourne the great.