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      October 18, 2017Letter Found in a CrateFrancis Santana

      Dear bor/der patrol officer,
      you chased me into the
      broi/ling land/scape. Fear
      dro/ve me like the low
       
      winds of a storm. I got
      away with the uncla/imed
      dust. I want to ap/ologize
      for not gi/ving us a chance
       
      to sit under the acacia
      black/brush and talk about
      what it means to be on the
      inside of a line that mo/ves
       
      like a fat belly. I wonder
      what kind of wis/dom is
      co/di/fied in/si/de your
      han/dbook. Is there a
       
      cata/log of lost ton/gues?
      Are tribes tracked by the
      displaced mile? Is there a
      bla/ck/list for boys who
       
      disregard space? But never
      mind all this, I’m wri/ting
      to see if we can find a way
      to cha/ng/e the sa/me
       
      old sto/ry. Let’s sit. We
      have grown in/si/de each
      other like the wood/worm.
      But our daught/ers, th/ey
       
      jump rope in the same
      bac/ky/ard. Pe/rhaps, they
      hold the key to what we
      a/r/e. P/e/rh/ap/s, th/e/y
       
      mean amplitude the way
      we mean f/ence. I have to
      go now, shou/ld start
      picking all the ripe oranges.

      from #56 - Summer 2017

      Francis Santana

      “When I was ten years old, I found Pablo Neruda gathering dust on a bookshelf—that’s when poetry became the only language I could speak to my first love. When that first love looked away I wrote to myself about solitude. When in that solitude I began to see my sisters and my brothers being carted away around me, I had to come out and speak up, to write beyond myself. I do get lost sometimes, mostly in the type of anger that supersedes tact and drowns the tenderness required to mend bullet holes. And the truth is I want to give up more often than not, but to hang back is not an option. I write to be heard, to keep away from extinction.”

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