I have learned
to recognize
the shape
of your headlights,
to move myself
out of your way.
The distinct resonance
your guts make,
the mechanical rumble,
the grunt, your need
to swallow—
I know it
since before 2014:
run.
When I read
POLICÍA MUNICIPAL
on your side,
I think
about my name, too,
about our births,
our ontogenetic destinies:
me, pencil in hand,
I record the date
of a generic
English class—and you,
siren loud and bright,
aren’t you supposed
to transport
rescue?
Anywhere I walk
you corner me
into a street,
all memory:
You block
the way,
number 002
tattooed
above your back
tire.
Guns aim.
The Costa Line 2510
empties
of Normalist students.
Rocks
against bullets.
They beg you
to stop,
their friend
Aldo Gutiérrez Solano
lies beside you,
pool of blood expanding
from his head.
Later,
you take students—
nuestros hermanos—
with your guns
you point them
to the bed
that is your back,
and you take them
forever away
and into the bane
of remembrance.
__________________________________________
*The Ford Ranger was used by the Iguala Municipal Police in
key events in the 2014 Ayotzinapa murders and disappearance
of 43 Normalist students.
(video warning: gore)
Manuel Calvillo de la Garza is a Mexican writer whose work has received support from Fiction Collective 2 and from Chapman University, where he taught and obtained his MFA from. He has participated at the Juniper Summer Writing Institute, and as an Ancinas Scholar at Community of Writers. His work appears or is forthcoming in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Cutthroat Magazine, and in the anthology Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century (2nd edition). He is at work finishing his first novel, 'School of Artistas Inmigrantes,' and will begin his PhD studies in Creative Writing at the University of Denver in Fall 2021.