Invasion of Ideas

by Victor David Sandiego

In hard-packed craters, when water ran foul and my heart was still small in its progression from slave song to symphony, I watched for your seed in sand, saw spring limp into summer.

Truth and dust in my face, with my books and the entire bones of Joseph, I renounce my country (a hailstorm of welts) and search the complete evening of my life for a hillside of crops.

These things still nourish me: olive, peach, corn, cactus, orange – and a fragile sense of a god who has lost control of his bladder.

      In my child mind, a furrow
      cut with a stick
      is food
      on the harvest table
      and my mother
      a warm robe
      to cover my shaking chest.

Yet: from concord, war slips beyond reconciliation. Brother surrenders to the flood. The hawk swoops down on the snake. God burns his image on my thigh.

These are my stories
that on a cool night crackle
in the knots of logs; these are my smells that mix
with smoke
from the curling edge of bark.

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Victor David Sandiego lives in the high desert of central México where he writes, studies, and plays drums with jazz combos and in musical / poetry collaborations. His work appears in various journals (Cerise Press, Crab Creek Review, Floating Bridge Review, Off The Coast, Generations Literary Journal, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Tishman Review, others) and has been featured on public radio. He is the founder and current editor of Subprimal Poetry Art. His website is victordavid.com.

Photography: adapted from Ploughed field, by Amanda Slater.