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      December 6, 2010City LimitsJ. Scott Brownlee

      Once every year, we slaughter
      the bulls. We make burnt offerings

      to God while clans of poor Tejanos
      jump in old Ford trucks, waiting to melt

      the pools of asphalt for new roads.
      We take our time when we make

      love. We are proud soldiers
      who have twice toured Iraq:

      our loaded guns, our livelihoods
      off safety. We are deer hunters

      not for sport.  We hunt here for survival.
      We have fought wars you would not fight.

      Our bullet wounds and PTS are proof
      of what we’ve witnessed outside church:

      that only suffering can make a body
      bleed enough to cleanse it.

      We work so hard some days
      our backs swell up

      on loading docks like Christ’s,
      but we keep loading anyway.

      A few of us, the lucky ones,
      drive fork-lifts. The rest of us

      still use our hands: this heaviness,
      this waiting for the weight of day

      to pass into the arteries of night.
      Then we can rest.  Blood

      is the weight of sin we carry.
      Blood is the color of the sky

      over our town.
      We make burnt offerings

      to God every December.
      We still light candles

      with their promise of return.
      We know Christ’s coming back.

      We still say, “Merry Christmas,”
      and believe the Bible’s true.

      The swimming pool is where we go
      to waste our time—there or the Sonic

      with its cheese fries, flurries, drinks.
      And at DQ you get a dipped cone

      for a dollar twenty-five,
      although it used to be much cheaper.

      By ten most people fall asleep.
      The rest shoot pool at Granite-O,

      that bar just outside town where
      young men swallow any evidence

      of prayer.  Each shot glass empty,
      empty, full.  And there’s a hoot owl,

      somewhere, singing.  The milking does
      and dappled fawns lie in the brush

      outside our plywood houses, bedding down.
      When they rise it’s Saturday, and raining.

      The poor kids start to wrestle in the mud,
      wake up their parents in the trailer park.

      By noon they’re playing soccer
      with the red ball

      they stole from Dollar General.
      And then on Monday after school

      our JV football team at practice
      in the sun, their helmets gleaming,

      insect phalanx. Yellow jacket stingers,
      combs of crab grass at their feet:

      it must be August once again if,
      past that line of bruised-black boys,

      beyond the bleachers and the oak trees,
      we hear peacocks with their shrill calls

      cry a song we will never forget:
      that first music of suffering.

      from #33 - Summer 2010