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  MATEO

  THE WORK CREW

  Six hundred Spaniards—all hired in Cuba—

  now sleep in boxcars. My team of twelve

  is a muttering nest of secret plots.

  As I listen to the gruff voices

  of my angry crew, I barely

  understand their raging way

  of seeing the world.

  Anarchy is their favorite word.

  It means no government, no rules.

  It means: Cause trouble.

  Create chaos.

  Dig a deep canal,

  and then explode it.

  Destroy our own work,

  just to defeat the rich men

  who pay us.

  The anarchists decide to include me,

  even though I am so much younger,

  and an islander,

  and frightened.

  So I nod, pretending that I’m willing

  to carry their smuggled messages

  and smuggled weapons,

  but the truth is, I’ve already lived

  in a house of trouble

  for too long.

  Dodging the fists of an angry

  war veteran

  was enough to make me

  permanently cautious.

  MATEO

  BACKBREAKING

  Nights of imagining anarchy

  are terrifying, but days

  of lifting and moving

  heavy train tracks

  are so exhausting

  and painful

  that I feel

  as though I’m being

  swallowed

  and chewed

  by a monster

  made of living

  breathing

  hungry

  mud.

  Each morning after breakfast,

  a labor train steams us down, down, down,

  into the depths of an excavation pit

  called Culebra—“the Serpent.”

  My doom.

  We line up beside a muddy train track

  that we are expected to shift

  deeper and deeper and deeper

  as the Serpent Cut grows

  more hellish,

  with gigantic mounds of dynamited rock

  and swampy dirt

  that the spoil trains haul up, up, up,

  in endless, dreary, soul-drowning

  rain, rain, thunderous, lightning-strike

  rain.

  To move a track, we have to bend, lift,

  heave, and grunt as one,

  all of us bursting

  with furious curses, screaming

  across this impossibly steep

  canyon

  that we are creating

  by moving these tracks

  farther and farther downhill,

  so that more and more

  rock and mud

  can be hauled

  up and out,

  as if we are

  struggling

  to reach

  the fiery

  earth’s

  melted

  heart.

  HENRY

  from the island of Jamaica

  THE LIFE OF A DIGGER

  Jamaican digging crews have to sleep

  eighty men to a room, in huge warehouses

  like the ones where big wooden crates

  of dynamite are stored.

  My hands feel like scorpion claws,

  clamped on to a hard hard shovel all day,

  then curled into fists at night.

  At dawn, the steaming labor trains

  deliver us by the thousands, down into

  that snake pit where we dig

  until my muscles feel

  as weak as water

  and my backbone

  is like shattered glass.

  But only half the day

  is over.

  At lunchtime, we see sunburned

  American engineers and foremen

  eating at tables, in shady tents

  with the flaps left open,

  so that we have to watch

  how they sit on nice chairs,

  looking restful.

  We also watch the medium-dark

  Spanish men, relaxing as they sit

  on their train tracks, grinning

  as if they know secrets.

  We have no place to sit. Not even

  a stool. So we stand, plates in hand,

  uncomfortable

  and undignified.

  Back home, I used to dream of saving

  enough Panama money

  to buy a bit of good farmland

  for Momma and my little brothers

  and sisters, so that we would all

  have plenty to eat.

  Now all I want is a chair.

  And food with some spice.

  And fair treatment.

  Justice.

  MATEO

  TRAPPED

  The life of a train-track mover

  is grueling. Exhausting. Painful. Dull.

  Even worse, the anarchists expect me

  to risk my life smuggling their

  handwritten newsletters

  from one boxcar barracks to another.

  So I sneak away at night, planning

  to find my way back to the docks,

  hoping to board any ship

  headed home . . .

  but I’m caught by a policeman

  and dragged back to my boxcar,

  where all of us are warned

  that it’s too late for escape.

  We signed contracts. If we break them,

  we’ll be arrested and chained.

  MATEO

  PAYDAY

  The payroll office is just a train car

  with two windows and two signs:

  GOLD. SILVER. My first two

  English words.

  Our whole crew waits in a slow, snaking

  line that leads to the SILVER sign,

  while beside us at the GOLD window,

  a short, swiftly moving row of americano

  foremen and steam-shovel drivers

  hold out big, floppy cowboy hats

  to catch a shower

  of gold.

  Gold. Just like the bell-bright coins

  in that recruiter’s magic show

  of metallic

  music.

  When my turn finally comes,

  I hold out a cupped palm

  to receive a moon-glossy

  trickle

  of silver.

  My pay amounts to a mere

  twenty cents per hour

  of spirit-crushing

  misery.

  HENRY

  HALF PAY

  When the Spanish track-moving crew

  goes ahead of us, we watch, we count.

  Then our turn comes, and we hold out

  eager hands, palms cupped to receive

  ten cents per hour.

  We’ve been in Panama only a few days,

  and already we’re twice as poor

  as the Spaniards.

  It’s just like the sugar fields at home,

  where Englishmen own the land

  and medium-dark foremen supervise,

  while men like me

  have to chop, chop, chop,

  with sharp machetes that make us

  feel like slaves. Waiting to fight.

  Ready to escape.

  JOHN STEVENS

  from the United States of America

  Chief Engineer, Panama Canal

  TEAMWORK

  If I could hire only white Americans,

  I would, but they don’t want shovel jobs

  and they won’t work for silver.

  Dark islanders are my only choice,

  along with a few hundred semi-whites,

  just to show the Jamaicans how easily

  they can be replaced.


  But islanders are childlike, easily bored . . .

  so I’m creating a sporting atmosphere

  to motivate hard work. I’ve divided

  all the laborers

  into ethnic teams.

  Hearty competition will spur men

  from each nation

  to dig faster and shovel

  more mud, loading

  more and more dirt and rocks

  into the

  spoil trains.

  Maybe I’ll even keep score

  and publish the names of winners

  in newspapers all over the world.

  Imagine how proud those Jamaicans

  will feel, if they can manage to beat

  the French speakers from little islands

  like Guadeloupe

  and Martinique.

  It will probably be

  just a matter of time

  until islanders start

  placing bets.

  MATEO

  SILVER TOWN

  Rain, rain, rain, mud, mud, mud,

  and labor so brutally grueling,

  and hope draining, and muscle

  straining, and filth heaving,

  that it’s almost impossible for me

  to believe that this much muddy sludge

  can be moved by ordinary men

  instead of giants.

  The only relief is payday, no matter

  how stingy.

  We take our wages to a makeshift town

  made of mud

  and rum.

  In ramshackle tents and market stalls,

  vendors from all over the world

  shout in a hundred languages.

  There are Sikhs from India wearing

  colorful turbans, and Chinese doctors

  offering strange cures, and Italians selling boots,

  Greeks with jars of olives,

  Romanians telling fortunes,

  indios from Ecuador weaving

  fine white hats from dry reeds,

  and local children from right here

  in Panamá offering lottery tickets

  and spicy snacks—corn fritters,

  sweet cakes, and fried fish

  from the river,

  round eyes staring

  from greasy heads.

  Bullfights.

  Cockfights.

  Card games.

  Dancing girls.

  There are so many choices

  for ways to spend payday

  that I almost feel tempted

  to go off by myself and keep my

  stingy silver wages so that I can buy

  paper and pencils to sketch

  every wonder that I see when I walk

  through the forest, or even right here,

  on this bustling Bottle Alley street

  made of mud

  and rum.

  Long ago, when Mami was alive

  and Papi was sane, I had the chance to go

  to school for two whole years. I fell in love

  with art class, even though I was supposed to

  like reading and writing or learning math

  and geography.

  I never imagined that I would work

  in one of the faraway places I studied

  on those big, flat maps that made me

  long to paint the whole world

  with bright colors.

  Now, while most of the Spanish men

  rush off to bullfights and others vanish

  into tents where I imagine that secret

  anarchist meetings

  must be going on, I roam alone,

  wondering what to do with the rest

  of my life.

  Each saloon has separate entrances

  for silver men and gold, so I slip in

  through a silver door, but not too far,

  just barely inside—until slowly, I end up

  edging closer and closer

  to a boxing ring

  where a young Jamaican

  is fighting a young Barbadian,

  both of them wearing the names

  of their islands on scribbled signs

  that dangle around their necks.

  The sight of fists should send me

  scurrying for safety, but so far away

  from my drunken father, I begin

  to wonder how it would feel

  to fight back.

  When the Barbadian loses,

  the Jamaican goes up against

  a Trinidadian, and when the new man

  is knocked out, I leap forward,

  and without any sign to name

  my island, I flail

  wild punches

  and kicks,

  imagining

  that my enemy

  is Papi.

  HENRY

  THE BOXING MATCH

  I could say it’s the rum,

  but it’s really those humiliating

  lunches, watching Spaniards

  lounging on train tracks

  while I have to eat

  standing up

  like an animal

  in a corral.

  Each punch I throw

  at this inexperienced kid

  feels like a bite

  of strong strong spice,

  making all those

  shameful mealtimes

  a little more

  tasty.

  MATEO

  AFTER THE FIGHT

  Losing is so familiar that I almost feel

  as though I’m home.

  I walk out of the saloon alone, slogging

  across Bottle Alley, this street of muddy

  lost dreams.

  Like a vision from the forest, la yerbera

  appears—Anita, the herb girl—with her

  delicately balanced

  enormous basket

  of twigs and petals

  that seem to overflow

  like a magical fountain

  as she sings:

  willow bark for pain,

  basil stems for peace of mind,

  goosefoot epazote leaves

  to charm the gas out of beans . . .

  She looks like a ruffled forest bird,

  with her colorful skirts and a necklace

  of green feathers strung between red seeds

  and the blue wings of huge

  shimmering

  butterflies.

  Without any way to paint her true beauty,

  I pull one of the twigs from her basket

  and scratch a rough shadow

  of her smile

  in mud.

  ANITA

  RARE CURES

  Mateo asks the price of azafrán—

  saffron, the most expensive spice

  because it is the golden pollen

  of a tiny purple crocus flower,

  gathered one strand at a time

  by my own hand.

  Mateo’s fists are bruised, his cheeks

  blood-streaked. Has he been arguing

  in the dance halls, fighting over a girl?

  The thought makes my basket feel

  as protective as a helmet.

  But he looks too sad for real wildness,

  so I give him a bit of the fragrant spice

  as a gift, to help him remember

  his mother’s kitchen

  and to thank him

  for the strange

  little portrait, pressed

  into mud.

  Then I leave him standing

  as if dazed, while I roam away

  from Silver Town, back into

  my forest,

  my musical

  green home.

  THE HOWLER MONKEYS

  DYNAMITE

  WE HATE YOUR BOOM

  WE FEAR YOUR BLAST

  WE ROAR OUR FURY

  OUR RAGE

  OUR TERROR

  OUR HORROR

  OF STRANGERS

  WITH EXPLOSIONS


  SO MUCH LOUDER

  THAN OUR OWN

  POWERFUL

  POWERFUL

  POWERFUL

  VOICES

  AS WE HOWL

  GO AWAY GO AWAY GO AWAY

  GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO

  A MONKEY-EATING EAGLE

  PEERING DOWN FROM SKY

  Smaller monkeys are tasty

  but big hairy howlers

  are the meatiest

  so I search from high above

  for dark specks in treetops

  far below

  so far

  yet easy enough to pierce

  with sharp talons

  after I plummet

  down

  from

  hunger

  to

  my wild

  forest feast.

  A THREE-TOED SLOTH

  PEERING UP FROM A BRANCH

  Above me, a loud monkey vanishes,

  but I’m slow and silent;

  no eagle can see me

  dangling

  upside down

  with green plants growing

  all over my shaggy hair.

  Beetles munch my algae.