Jaime Rodríguez

Crates stacked,
  oranges bruising
on each other’s weight.

My mother’s wrists—
  harvest ropes pulled
tighter each season.
  Men laughed, spat
dust into the rows.

The sting of citrus oil
  seeped into the cuts,
hands burning sweet.
  The trees knew
how to wound us back.

We slept in the ruts
  the tractors left,
my sister’s breath
  against my back.

Night was only a tarp
  tied to a truck,
stars counting us.

Now my skin remembers earth,
  the chill before dawn,
work waiting outside
  the canvas flaps.

Sometimes I wake to birdsong
  in a room with walls
and turn the fruit in my hand.

Sometimes I taste the iron
  of the tin cup
we passed between us—

water turning into rumor.

Bio

Jaime Rodríguez is a Chicano poet from the Rio Grande Valley. His work traces the quiet tensions of memory, desire, masculinity, and silence across cultural and ecological landscapes.