Foreign Soil or Callow Heart and Hand
By Chris Cummins
When we were twelve
The world outside a bicycle ride
To foreign lands, my brother and
I took a job picking beans,
Berries, peppers—anything carried
In a bushel basket to earn a dollar
From Sauer's Farm.
We worked the rows
Dragged the chaff, poked the dirt
With jagged hoes
And rode along the bumpy ruts
In a rickety tractor wagon with
Seventeen boys and men from Mexico
Who slept in fits of minutes
Between picking peas and weeding ‘round
The cloudy heads of cauliflower.
They spoke a broken English
Recipe of fact and code for
Folks of this northern soil.
My meager Spanish learned from
Cartoons and restaurants yielded
Little more than menu items: please
And thank you, but they smiled kindly
At innocent attempts of conversation
While tattered boots trudged from field to
Field—families two thousand, two hundred
Miles away
Ours a twenty minute bike ride
Front door to barn door and back.
Lunch bells invited reprieve for
Bent backs and stiff knees,
And the confusing fusion of those
Seeking survival unseen in my simple home.
Words like hermano, esposa, hija and muerto
Floated about Coca Cola cans and corn fritas.
When men with badges came, we
learned that all were not the same—
Marcos and Miguel quietly disappeared
beneath the rusty hinged trap door
Hidden by hay and dusty compassion.
We worked ten-hour shifts, thirty bushel days
Rode home, cash in hand, weekend spending
For cassette tapes of Huey Lewis and Dire Straits
Atari games and candy cigarettes—
Callow consideration of a dollar.
Late season for some meant mid-harvest
For others, and once August rolled into
September school replaced the sun's ascent
Hands healed their cuts and callouses,
Farmer tans faded, and
Early morning signified bus rides and
Lockers, book reports and tests.
The easy freedom in the fields gone,
Bike in the garage leaning ‘gainst the wall
My thoughts two thousand, two hundred
Miles distant from frailty and fear,
Which knelt in dirt and dwelt only
Twenty minutes down the road
###
Chris Cummins lives outside Buffalo, New York, and teaches high school English, creative writing and drama. In addition, he directs plays and musicals and teaches in a film academy, a multi-faced learning experience which includes script-writing, acting and video editing. Although his most recent work focused on the writing and production of two locally performed musicals, his first writing love is poetry. He’s been featured in Collateral, The Buffalo News, Heduan Review, Book of Matches, Literary Heist, Lotus-Eater, Aromatica Poetica, The Gilded Weathervane, Lothlorien, WordSwell, Goose River Press and other small presses.
Travel Guide
By Malaika W. Kamau
The speckles of cherry red in the green tweed newsboy cap I swiped from Papa’s abandoned closet and the pink that brackets the setting sun seen from the sliding doors of motel balconies must be cousins. What these six months will have me amount to is about as riveting a topic of speculation as the whereabouts of that yellow vintage Trainspotting tee of mine. Dryer-heat soft, a daffodil petal to the touch. That thing got gobbled up. Must’ve been enticed by a strange but generically good-looking fella nattering on ‘bout having Turkish goat milk ice cream in his white van. To be never heard from again. If there’s a country I’d like to visit this summer it’d be the nation Where-All-Misplaced-Things-Convene. An island within the Andaman Archipelago. The balmy climate of the Amalfi coast, choked with belly-up felines invading the streets à la Istanbul, Sweden’s sylvan irreality and walkable infrastructure, the natives distinctly un-American in their cigarette twirling honesty. No one eats because they’ve had all their worldly desires obviated by fentanyl league bliss. Wedding rings and letterman jackets, train tickets, stud earrings, carabiners, the bronze medal in Olympic chess, letters between lovers failed by USPS, a starving child’s faith in religion, human decency in online film forums, my Philosophy 1 professor’s last nerve, the hospice patient’s last breath, phone calls that should’ve happened but didn’t because ego. Erasers, mechanical pencils, lent books. Time. Cavort in the town square at six o’clock sharp under the aftershocks of an ochre crisp dusk and the prism of slopping Christmas lights that make the cobble stone shiver like a kaleidoscope. It all fits into place and reminds me of the phrase “meant to be.” I’m denied re-entry into the United States but no worries, as I’ll have already picked up on the language of loss and found a place to sleep on the bunk bed of an old buddy of mine.
###
Malaika W. Kamau (author of If Orpheus Was a Carp) was born in 2006 in Lusaka, Zambia, but was a perpetual nomad throughout her childhood and adolescence as part and parcel of being an army brat. Today, when not roller-skating, weightlifting, playing the drum set or reading, Kamau manages her undergraduate coursework while moonlighting as an author and aspiring filmmaker. Her writing is to appear in the forthcoming Fall 2025 issue of BRIO.
The Dilettante 
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