Dried Corazón – New England Review

i have a desert in my corazón
bent like an accordion

a dry old desert with reptile
claws that tear my guts

a whole field of burnt nopales
live in my corazón

someone old used glass shards
to carve in los nopales’ corazones
the names of their dead

i have a desert in my corazón
littered with dead pollos’s
corpses and names

i bear a whole dried up desert
in my corazón that swallows
all my tears every time i die;