Ricardo Moran
Sunday
every Sunday is the same
in 1975. after church
at Saint Mary’s, not Our
Lady of Guadalupe,
we go
for pancakes, for orange juice
like good Americans
even though we’re Mexican
Catholics and speak little English.
on highway 86,
parallel to the train tracks I sit
in a cream-colored GM Vega.
fields of green, leafy Sudan rustle.
Neil Sedaka’s “Laughter in the Rain”
touches ridges of asphalt
to Holtville,
to nana and tata’s house
where nothing lives
but a movie theatre
that will burn two years from now.
there is a traffic light that swings
in the intersection. in three more
summers it will be demoted
to a stop sign.
there’s a small leafy park. a gas station sells
Coors Light, cigarettes. a small outhouse
of a police station under a water tower.
forlorn subdivision sidewalks. soft sands slide
on silent streets. mirages of children
play, a ball bounces.
and on this Sunday afternoon
I hope I will have something
that doesn’t burn, that’s not removed,
that’s mine to keep.