On the Murder of Juan de la Cruz - August 16th, 1973
© Copyright 2004 Jensea Storie

When Juan de la Cruz head the shot-gun blasts
from the flatbed truck swerving towards them, 
his hand, reaching towards Maximina,
never received the tin cup
of water she offered. 
Instead, he turned and the third shot 
tore off his straw sombrero:
tiny pictures of Jesus and Kennedy 
scattered in the dirt. 
The fourth shot punctured
his United Farm Workers Button
right below his heart.
As he slid into the arms of his wife,
his mouth panting like a tongue-swollen dog,
he knew only that the catcalls and yells
beyond the silence slowly filling his ears, 
were not from heaven, 
for heaven was nowhere 
as the foothold of cornflowers
and grape fields rose above him
and carried scent of his brothers’ boots.
Before his eyes closed for the last time,
he saw the face of the Virgin Mary of Guadalupe
dangling from the chain above his wife’s breasts
as if from the far off fields of Mexico
a benediction was being offered,
and he would never again have to say, 
“I am hungry.”
Maximina, cursing the skies,
pressed her kerchief against his wound,
and turned her eyes away only to hold
the eyes of the grower staring down at her,
his arms folded across his heavy chest.
The wilderness of wires and electrical towers 
hummed above Cesar’s black eagles
handsewn on strike flags fluttering
in the wind where the blare
of the flatbed horn could be heard
rolling off the road as straight as a gun barrel.
There is more to be said, but let the others speak:
compensinos who are confined like dogs
in fenced-in fields without toilets, compensinos,
who watch daily the barrel of water
sleep in the mouth of the foreman’s truck,
a row of tin cups hanging like teeth until noon. 
Listen for their songs rising out 
of their parched throats, today and tomorrow,
from the endless furrows south of the Gila River
to the Arvin-Weed-Fields where the driver 
of the flatbed truck walks free
outside the fence, along the road.