The Straitjackets
Feb. 2008
page 18

Featured Poet (continued):
Armando t. Zuniga


Hope

Hope, in any language that I think it,
has not fed me for three days now,
has not made waiting on this corner for work any easier,
any less painful.

What is in your eyes is my dignity.
I give it to you, asking for work, waiting.
What is in my heart
is mine,
is home,
and what it pumps belongs to me.
The leftovers go into my work.
It is all I have.
Work.
Another truck pulls up,
"You, you and you."
I can work bricks and motar!
I can work wood!
I can work...

Hope, in any language that I think it,
in the back of this stranger's truck,
with bricks or motar or wood,
it doesn't matter ,
I can work.

 


Armando T. Zuniga, poet and educator, lives in Ventura County, California. He is a graduate of San Diego State University where he earned a degree in English with special emphasis in creative writing. His poetry has appeared in the anthology Up Against the Wall by Hard Pressed Press, Urban:The Latino Magazine and Blue Collar Review. The poems included here appeared inMr. Zuniga's Dream Builders published by Partisan Press.

 
Poetry by Armando T. Zuniga
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