Nothing Grows in Fontana

By Michael Vargas

Issue 48 • Fall 2023 • Poetry

My grandpa laid chains between the arms of his trees
dressed the legs in white latex paint
amended the soil with a disarming placement of shoveled chicken shit
just to enrich the soil

I can’t remember his voice
but a sour distinction of Camel smoke and World War II asbestos
a reference point my mom still keeps
magnetized to a wheel of tape

from what the Sun and I recall
though hardly defining it may be
I remember the enchanting rhythm of gnawing
flesh from sugar cane,
eclipsing my face behind a swollen mouth,
drunk with fibrous love,
drooling platitudes my tongue would embrace
like secondhand communion

I imagine my grandma knew
from the window of her basin
how earth had prepared my second grave
she could read it on my skin
full blistered and painted with onion tears
a remedy to soothe the scratches under every evening moon
reverberated by her tar-filled lungs lined with holy scriptures

though I bare the name of a sword-wielding archangel
my celestial body was unmatched by Pluto’s gravity

so my grandpa accepted the vestigial shell that my mother had given to me
and laid to rest a conceptual death binding me to dirt

What alchemy resides in the rocky soil of Fontana?

the place of my birth
just follow my grandpa’s familial absence into the Central Valley
like every other bracero

I listen to my grandma’s sober voice
lipstick drawn in demi-matte tarot

the home was never her dominion
she bled her hands over cotton
and returned at the end of the season
only to work on her knees injecting hens with medication

this is why she advised my grandpa to construct a sieve
a landslide captured before the rooster’s song
transmuting amber clay, smoke, and cast-iron soot
into immaculate plumes of dew
highlighting our ground flesh into breathable soil

What magic I create now?

after the settling of Santa Ana’s erosive waves of wind
revealed my dispatched roots

I present each burgeoning sprout like my grandparents taught
denying every casted stone with a bloom
admonishing envious patrons with my downcast eyes
bewildered by my proximity to death
because I adorn my second grave the same way my grandpa did
with the silhouette of a rose’s pentacle, hidden from you

Michael Vargas

Michael Vargas is a queer chicano from Southern California. He comes from a family of field laborers, mechanics, and other blue collar workers. He is a first generation college student, holding a BA degree in English and anthropology. He currently works as a Letter Carrier for the US Postal Service. His work has been published in The Fairy Tale Review and Ink & Voices.

Jeff Corwin

Over 40+ years as a successful award-winning commercial photographer, Jeff Corwin has taken photos out of a helicopter, in jungles, on oil rigs and an aircraft carrier. Assignments included portraits of famous faces and photos for well-known corporate clients. Corwin has turned his discerning eye to fine art photography. He still creates photographs grounded in design. Humble shapes, evocative lines. Eliminate clutter. Light when necessary. Repeat. His fine art photography has garnered awards, national and international museum exhibitions, gallery shows, work in permanent collections, features in numerous fine art publications, radio and newspaper interviews and representation by several contemporary galleries.