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Prairie Schooner 77.3 (2003) 28-32



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Their Lives and Shadows

Gina Franco


Again with the camcorder. Somebody
makes a gift of stolen property
and suddenly we're all watching ourselves
from my brother's perspective since he is the one
who can make it work. The parakeet shivers
in his bamboo cage, my brother's wife,
nineteen, pulls her hair into a rubber band
and scolds the toothless baby eating popcorn
from her lap, in loving memory a two-foot
crucifix nailed to the turquoise wall:

Carla, look over here, that's right, smile.
God girl, you got some big lips. You need
to give your tía some of those lips -
she's been checking out pictures of that carp
we caught when we were kids and all week
she's been wishing for a mouth like that. [End Page 28]

The same nose too small on his face,
the same thick bottom lip. He pruned
the fruit trees in the same shirt he wore
yesterday. He set fire to the branches
and they singe the sky between us like more
and more stars, the sparks rising up, identical
lives. He sits in a fold-up chair through
the night, vigilant, his bourbon, companion:

You don't remember that night? Man how could you
forget we were freezing our nalgas at the reservoir,
it was just this skinny little moon and the lake
was black, black. I mean we had ten poles
cast every which way and because the rain
was clinging to the lines we could just make them out,
like webs in the headlights of the truck.
Tudy kept saying they're biting bro,
that's why they're vibrating like that, it'll work,
and Richard's going you're full of shit you drive
a truck all weekend, that's algae, weeds.

Weeds, lime-green water, four hundred feet
below our bare legs the silt skates over
the lake bottom, lurking below us.
Something great and bright lies deep looking up,
flashes through the murk too quick for sight,
and he swims in pursuit. I tread near shore
where dead fish quiver with the scuttle and pick
of crayfish, small hearts, small black eyes,
shadows their lives and shadows out far, the buoy
and my brother like faces brooding on the surface.

Well, Tudy lights match after match, he chews
on the end of a joint, tight as a toothpick
between his wide lips, and all he can get
is this lank wet smoke that reeks like a carcass. [End Page 29]
Oígas, not even weeds he says inhaling.
So we reel in the lines, toss everything
into the pickup, and pile into the cab to sleep.

Sleep for him like a phantom limb
even before the cocaine days. Nothing so pure
as whiteness searing into the daily brown tunnels:
and you dig and you dig until the day the guy
you worked with for years loses an arm
to a bulldozer. Time to quit before you
break down in front of those before you,
your father, Carlos, your father's father, Juan,
their aluminum lunchboxes, their steel-toed boots,
their malachite gifts, azurite, cuprite, fool's gold,
at time, dear pilferage, the cost of a job.

In the morning we see that we forgot one,
the old yellow pole we stole with the busted reel.
Richard pulls on the line, it's stuck,
and yeah, we should just knife it,
but we're already wet, we smell like seafood,
we're in trouble when we get home no matter what,
so Tudy goes after the hook, and he pulls,
and Richard wraps an unbelievable amount
of fishing string around his hand and elbow,
and there they are, our tíos, the oldest
and the youngest brother swearing what if
it's a fucking corpse, man, what then? -

Night, gang fight: we could just make them
out, two boys, brothers with shotguns
weaving down Shannon Hill and across
the railroad ties of the Black Bridge, barrels
and cowboy hats cocked to the heavens.
We hide behind a parked...

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