Stonecoast Review
The Literary Journal of the Stonecoast MFA
Foreman Lopez
By Dennis Cummings
When they came,
Tomás Lopez, the greenhouse foreman, sliced
through the polyethylene siding with pruning shears,
was caught in the canyon below the airport
five miles nearer the ocean.
In two hours he was marched back up
to an idling sage green van.
He returned mid-morning the following day,
one thigh burned badly by a truck’s radiator
at the Tijuana crossing,
slept all afternoon in the warehouse kitchen.
He jerked awake as the time-clock ticked
outside the greasy window.
Hay trabajo mañana? he asked.
Si, Tomás – como no. I watched him
as he broke an egg and poured it
into a tumbler of warm Coca-Cola.
You okay? I asked. Si, guero, he said.
Asi es la movie. Todo está bien.
DENNIS CUMMINGS lives in Poway, CA. He has lived in San Diego County all his life and has worked with flower growers there for more than four decades. He studied creative writing at San Diego State for a while during the early seventies. His poems appear or are forthcoming in Watershed, Barnstorm, and The Baltimore Review.
This poem is part of the online edition of Stonecoast Review Issue 22.
Photo by Max Böhme
