POETRY BY ESTEBAN RODRÍGUEZ

RAVE

But instead of jumping,

letting strobe lights and sweat

christen your face, body,

you think of your parents,

how before they made it

to this country, they were packed

in such dark and impossible

spaces: the bed of a pick-up,

a motel room off a highway,

the shade beneath a bush

in the middle of a field, farm,

desert. And there was the back

of a truck, one that carried them

and people like them to the next

point of their journey, and that,

regardless of what air seeped

through its cracks and crevices,

was still too tight to breathe,

to feel nothing short of having

their throats clenched, squeezed,

of having no choice but to believe—

like you believe the more you dance

in this once abandoned building—

that even if their bodies want to quit,

they must push through the night,

pray that when they wake up

in the morning, they’d have made it

safely to the other side.

Esteban Rodríguez is the author of the poetry collections Dusk & Dust, Crash Course, In Bloom, (Dis)placement, and The Valley. His work has appeared in Boulevard, Shenandoah, The Rumpus, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. He is the Interviews Editor for the EcoTheo Review, an Assistant Poetry Editor for AGNI, and a regular reviews contributor for [PANK] and Heavy Feather Review. He lives with his family in Austin, Texas.