The Chicano/Latino Literary Prize (2004) - Plot & Excerpts
On a wall a fresco of Jesus in thorns, red chiles strung in decades, apples in buckets, green chile roasting to peel and freeze, the air sweet as come. Santuario de Chimayó, steeples, like pencils, sign the sky. This is a pilgrimage, not a tour, make the sign of the cross. Behind the church a mountain kneels in a field. Sap on my fingers, plucking mushrooms from timbers, someday when I sleep with you it will taste like this. ONE DIMENSIONAL MAN His smile, a minus sign, cancels whole populations. I was useful once, a tape recorder he talked at and played back, a rear-view mirror announcing his face at stop lights. On a self-improvement spree he took me up like tennis or a Third World cause. I, the colored help, Guadalupe, quota, folk art, more chic than a Santa Fe healer he saw on the sly, my Guatemalan cottons matched his ties. Bastard. Strip-mining wasted your heart. How you love to subtract. Ordering soldiers to save a village you strike the match. You always liked me on my back, with an instamatic you snap, snap.
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