Making Sugar in Alamo, Texas By Cesar L. De Leon

the old man sets fire to sugarcane fields
on still August mornings
that's his job
                                                                           “sugar is brown until bleached”
he tells me over gas-station breakfast tacos

at sunrise his evacuation warning booms
from loudspeakers mounted on the bed of his new Ford
into acres of green stalks taller than us
en Español and Inglés

“unprocessed sugar is healthier for you, anyway
he says

some days, tired feet are escorted
into white vans lined up on the road’s shoulder

some days snowy egrets pursue
heartbeat-shaped echoes

some days the cane intones hollow
bone-hymn-answers into the wind

“white sugar is the number one killer
in America”
he says

 at noon the horizon froths
knots of black clouds

                                                “two years ago, they found the body of a man
in the field. Sheriff said he probably died
of heat exhaustion or dehydration
God only knows who he was.”
he tells me

at midnight I harvest surnames 
among feathers of ash that rest
against my doorstep

  they mouth
a litany of roots like a rope of thorns

I wrap it around my neck