We went to a school where most
of our uncles became our fathers,
the farther your father went,
the more uncles you had.
We were the fortunate ones,
the boys who had uncles who
helped us strum and string
and sing along lonely guitars.
Others weren’t so fortunate, they
were the ones who forgot the taste
of their father’s voice, the raspiness
that called them home at dusk.
Our uncles helped us as we sat
on the cusp of forgetting that touch,
that soft brush of the hair, that absent
mother’s breath on our foreheads.
Sometimes the letter would drop
from a guava tree and we would
leave our uncles behind, never
to see or hold their hands again.
And sometimes, when the rain
stopped, some of us would stay
behind, waiting for more and more
rain, until we, too, became uncles.
José B. González is the author of the poetry collections Toys Made of Rock and When Love Was Reels, and the co-editor of Latino Boom: An Anthology of US Latino Literature. A Pushcart Prize Winner, he has been anthologized in the Norton Introduction to Literature and has published his work in such journals as Boston Review, Callaloo, Huizache, Pilgrimage, and Connecticut River Review. His third poetry collection, Tongue Wrapped in Twine, from which the two poems in this issue appear, will be published by FlowerSong Press in 2025. A Fulbright Scholar, he is the founder and editor of LatinoStories.com.
