United States, (b. 1971)
Galdini Sausage
- Galdini Sausage sat on Sixth Street
- of industrial Del Sol marked by railroad and concrete.
- The front office and production
- filled a cul-de-sac that opened
- its mouth to swallow gulps of wind
- blowing over the nopal orchard across Sixth.
- The wind carried toward Highway 99,
- one great arm of overpass,
- off-ramp, on-ramp, cracked asphalt,
- construction, iron girdle,
- one great arm desperate to hold
- some soft mercy in the dark.
- The cul-de-sac sidewalk
- was lined by a long strip of grass,
- and every ten feet a Japanese maple
- offered thin shade and a place to eat lunch.
- The workers walked out,
- not with the green hard hat nor with
- the white smock of their work,
- not in pork blood, nor with pork fat
- wedged under their fingernails,
- but clean, and they hung their gear
- in the warehouse, in lockers
- outside the bathroom where
- they combed, rinsed vinegar from their eyes,
- and rolled down their denim sleeves
- when it was time to sit and eat.
- On Fridays, the men crossed the street
- and took out pocketknives.
- Cherry wood and bone-burned handles
- held the steel blades, and on the cutting edge,
- delicate as a dream,
- the strokes of a whetting stone left like
- the feathers on a quill.
- The workers walked around
- the nopal orchard and searched
- for the plants growing outside
- the hip-high chain-link fence,
- squatted in Del Sol’s summer heat,
- swiped clean their knife blades,
- and cut the flat green nopales
- for weekend evening barbecues.
- Most days, the men saved their strength
- with words under the trees at lunch.
- “I’m going down the highway,
- and I’ll have a small piece of earth and raise
- gray Appaloosas and palominos.”
- The workers listened, and they knew.
- And they stared beyond the nopales
- at the 99 leaving industrial Del Sol,
- and they took themselves
- to other places behind their eyelids
- while resting in the grass
- under the green leaves of the maple.
David Dominguez. Work Done Right. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press (2003).
Pig
- I pulled into Galdini Sausage at noon.
- The workers walked out of production
- and swatted away the flies desperate for pork.
- Pork gripped the men and was everywhere,
- in the form of blood, in the form of fat,
- and in pink meat stuck to the workers’ shoes.
- Outside, eighty-pound boxes of pork
- melted under the sun, and as the sun worked,
- the blood and fat grew soft, and the boxes,
- lined with wax, became like thin paper soaked in oil.
- Mack trucks came in with unprocessed pork
- and took out chorizo, linguica, hot links, and sausage:
- German, Sweet, Breakfast, Hot, and Mild.
- One man stood straight up into the sky,
- closed his eyes, and with his thumb and forefinger,
- worked out bits of meat from his eyelashes
- glistening like black grease under the sun.
- The air conditioner in Mr. Galdini’s office
- made the papers from his desk float onto the floor.
- He gave me a hard hat, a smock, an apron, and a hair net.
- “You’re in there,” he said and lifted the blinds
- of a window that partitioned his office from production.
- He stood, gut pushed out, and his whole body
- swayed with ease as we watched the workers walk out,
- humpbacked under the unyielding memory of pig.
David Dominguez. Work Done Right. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press (2003).
Oxtail Stew
- At five o’clock in the morning,
- I walked to work and passed the green ponds
- of Horizon Park where the last bluegill,
- caught on the low, slight bank,
- panted hard in the dark mud, crushed glass,
- sour bottle caps, whiskey,
- and the iron weight of heat and smog.
- This haze stared through eyes
- gray as the broken window panes
- on the cheap side of town,
- and when this haze held you
- and whispered in your ears its quiet tragedies,
- it stole your breath quick as time.
- This is where men gathered to sell peanuts,
- buckets of oranges, and roses,
- and they sat on the benches and watched
- the trucks drive by and disappear.
- What I want to say is simple:
- a man must do more than sell roses
- where the bums go and beg—
- he must keep something holy.
- He must breath the winds
- that rustle the orchards of the valley
- where the white almond blooms
- replenish with their soft scent.
- He must learn from the Appaloosa
- when she walks in from the fields
- and bows her head to a trough of water
- that reflects nothing but her eyes and the stars.
- Shoulder, fat, bone, and loose sheet metal
- banged out a day-long cacophony.
- Twenty-eight pounds of spice
- had to be mixed before the grinder was done.
- Mustard powder, paprika, salt,
- and chili powder boiled in my nose,
- in my eyes, and in the red throb
- of my hard nicked-up knuckles.
- By late morning the meat defrosted,
- and the boxes began their ooze.
- Pig parts became easy to recognize.
- Eighty pounds of guts, kidneys,
- and stomach fell across my chest
- each time a box ripped apart.
- We dared not stop the music of our work:
- the clack of a clean pine pallet,
- pink meat and white fat ground to a pulp,
- sweetened, stuffed, and crimped,
- the chorizo boxed, the boxes labeled,
- stacked, and wrapped.
- At lunch, I watched Guillermo hunker over the table
- and dig into his stew—carrots, potatoes,
- celery, oxtail, and gravy, made from
- chili peppers and fat, smoldering in a ceramic bowl.
- Guillermo took out a white cotton napkin
- and spread it evenly across his lap,
- picked up a piece of sourdough ripped
- from a loaf and soaked the bread in the stew
- for a long time… his own tired body
- taking back what the work took, and he ate.
- He sucked on chili peppers the color of blood
- and took another bite of the bread.
- He sucked out the beef from the eyes of the bones
- and gnawed on the soft marrow,
- and he drank hot coffee sweetened con canela.
- “Eloisa,” he said, “can cook,” and he touched
- the brown lace crocheted into the edge
- of his cotton napkin, rubbed his gut, wiped the table,
- and walked out to complete his work.
David Dominguez. Work Done Right. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press (2003).
About the Poet:
David Dominguez, United States, (b. 1971), is a poet, editor and educator. He was educated at California State University, Fresno, and the University of California, Irvine; received his MFA from the University of Arizona; and has attended the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference. He has taught at Long Beach City College and now teaches writing and literature at Reedley College in California’s San Joaquin Valley.
Dominguez is the author of the poetry collections Marcoli Sausage (2000), published in Gary Soto’s Chicano Chapbook Series; Work Done Right (2003); and The Ghost of César Chávez (2010). He has also been published in various magazines and journals, such as El Andar, Faultline, Flies Cockroaches and Poets, Crab Orchard Review, Luna, Bloomsbury Review, Solo and others.
Dominguez’s poems have been published in the anthologies: How Much Earth: The Fresno Poets (2001), The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (2007), Bear Flag Republic: Prose Poems and Poetics from California (2008), Breathe: 101 Contemporary Odes (2009), and Camino del Sol: Fifteen Years of Latina and Latino Writing (2010). [DES-07/22]
• Biographies here are short. Yet all the poets presented have fascinating lives. And they have created a bountiful trough of treasures beyond these works. Please root on about those you enjoy! I hope you find something informative, meaningful or that provokes your further contemplation.