How to Lie to a
Custom’s Agent
c. fidel espinoza
With her new set of gleaming white dentures,
my grandma rips through the American Flag
neatly sewn on the shit green uniform
of the Custom’s Agent. She ate her
naturalization papers one hungry night
when she heard my father
was marring a Juarez Woman.
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I sat in the drivers seat. Watching as my
grandma tore through the concrete barriers
of this cheap border. “You can’t cross seeds,”
said custom’s. “they corrupt
the integrity of the soil.” But a corn is a corn is a corn.
She wrestled the custom’s agent and the whole bridge shook.
She knew the old Tarumara one two, the Jack Johnson slip,
and her bones were clean from all
the limpias she had as a child.
American, she roared when questioned on her citizenship.
She had rolled the word American on her tongue until it became
a red velvet coat of anglo accents. My grandfather’s ghost
was smiling from the sky, his gold tooth was the gleaming sun.
holding the sky together.