BIO
Thomas Ray Garcia is a novelist and poet from Pharr, Texas whose fiction and poetry ranges from the fantastical world of Aurelia to the humid realm of the Rio Grande Valley. He has published short stories and poetry in figments Magazine, riverSedge, BorderSenses, and The New Engagement. He plans to pursue a PhD in American Literature and write every day."
The Pharr Riots
No
roadside memorial marks
The
heat of blood outside the barber shop.
only a bench with no bus stop
and
a chipped epitaph – rest in
peace?
Pharr? power?
But
the railroad tracks remember 1971.
Listening
to their whine, I hear picket-signs
Clash
against rocks raining like hail-fire
Doused
by hose streams and tear gas.
Heatwaves
blur Cage Boulevard, and I see
Mexicans
to the north riding bicycles barefooted
Anglos
to the south sowing agrarian visions
And
you, Alfonso Flores, hair cut and curious,
Shot
by a policeman aimless, soon blameless,
Slitting
the heart of Pharr with silent breath.
Bullet,
bullet, in the shaded corners of fear
We
sit complacent at computer desks while
The
restlessness rooted in our culture starves
For
the years when the speechless sparked flames
From
the friction between white and brown lives.
Everywhere
is electric, yet the bullet lives,
And
our memory hungers.