BY CHRIS SHORNE

From between these mountains the clouds rise up. They tip buckets of water over like clumsy pigs. They make of our milpas a slop. Our streets a river of muck. They march in with the wind rip the roof off our heads and peer in. When they see that we are cold and wet already, that we have a single fire and four dry logs, they come down on us like hungry dogs. We are all on our knees. Cursing the same god.

Our land is a boat made of cloud. Our land is a bowl spun round. A bowl filled and drained, land drenched and cracked. We do not talk back. We wait with our knees on dry land, our tongues in our hands. They made our hands. They make the story. Every spring that has ever been, ever will be, will be for them. Each large bean. Each ear. A kernel. A moment of maíz in the mouth of the mother, of the dog, of the chickens, the pigs, the worms that till, that tunnel a space to keep safe the rain that clouds bring, that clouds will.... We are all palm to palm. Praising the same god.

Chris Shorne holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles and has work published or forthcoming in Utne, Bennington Review, Portland Review, and Duende. Shorne spent a year as an international human rights accompanier with NISGUA (Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala), living part-time with Ixil genocide survivors in the Cuchumatan mountains.

Process Note: I wrote this poem while I was accompanying genocide survivors in Guatemala’s highlands at the request of the survivor organization Asociación para la Justicia y Reconciliación (AJR). Like much that happened over the year I spent with survivors—at the trial, but more often sitting around a wood fire in someone’s home—this poem came as an unexpected gift.