Eggs

"Egg!"

A radio call-in show giving away cartons of eggs in San Salvador.

You must answer three questions, each one with the

answer of ¨Egg.¨ People call because they are

hungry, or poor, or looking for something free.

I have no money and it makes me tired.

I got letters once from my friend´s seventh grade class

in Houston, Texas. The students tell me about their lives, their friends,

that they think it is a good thing what I am doing.

I have a friend.

She is a smart girl, graceful in many ways.

Her father crossed the desert for five straight days, the blisters he must have had,

and arrived in New York City. He came back in an airplane.

Changed after five years of Manhattan construction work, he drinks now. Has another woman. A former church leader now a bolo.

A dream of his daughter´s, to go to the university, on the rocks.

He drinks it down. Desperation from the poverty he couldn´t get out of,

his wife will leave soon and the kids will go, or maybe some will stay

and he will go again to the United States because there is nothing more

he has patience for.

I eat six tortillas with beans and am still hungry. I watch these people live, love, lose, move on, and I know I am not adapted. I still cannot write poetry

in Spanish, in their language. I am still afraid to try.

But this song does not have to be a sad one.