The Floor Is So Cold & Teocani and Alejandro

By Rick Kearns

The Floor is So Cold

Life had become
so dangerous
her abuela 
could no longer wait
for signals from the north.

Tiny Angelina was sent
into the desert night
to escape the war
inside the war

there was no choice.

Big men with 
strange voices and 
guns caught them 
outside the river bed
past the barbed wire dawn.

She was sent
to a hard square room
with no furniture
no blankets and
bright lights on constantly.

The floor is so cold
she told her sobbing mother,
my lips are blue.  
The men with the guns
made me sign some papers.

The floor is so cold Mama.
When can I come home?
Where are you?
Tecoani and Alejandro

[Alejandro Mora Venancio was one of the 43, from the municipality of Tecoanapa. In náhuatl: Tecoani means ‘tiger’ and apam means "in the river."]

tiger in the river
smells charred bones 
in the garbage pile
someone 
is lying

Tiger swims away
men with machines
bone ash floating
everywhere.

garbage pile 
is full today
martyr’s boneyard
tiger in the river

executioner 
in the palace

someone is dying

I am Alejandro
the swimming tiger
is my protector now.

The tiger in the river 
is not another trickster 
from the north
he knows who killed me

the tiger in the river
knows about the 
executioner in the palace
the TV toadies
the men with masks
the men with helmets

my tiger in the river 
is waiting
it's
   lunch
   time

Rick Kearns (aka Kearns-Morales) is a writer and teacher of Puerto Rican and European heritage from Harrisburg, Pa. His poems have appeared in over 70 literary publications, most in the US but a few in Ireland, UK, Puerto Rico, and Argentina.  He was named Poet Laureate of Harrisburg in 2014. Kearns has collaborated with musical accompaniment since 1992. Kearns is also a freelance journalist. As a journalist he has written for daily, weekly and monthly news publications since 1986. In the 21st century his work has focused on Latino and Native American issues. From 2006 to 2017 Kearns wrote about indigenous Latin American issues for Indian Country Today which became Indian Country Today Media Network the nation’s largest Native American news publication.