Love Poem

By Javier Zamora

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¿Don’t you know none of us get work visas?

Not all of us can afford coyotes. Most
walk, swim, train, run through countries
that bribe us.

Let me repeat,
not all of us can afford to wait around the block
5am to 4 pm just to get denied
by the US embassy.

We curse gringos,
get fucked up, blow our pisto, then passout,
¿don’t you give a shit?

Every September 15
we miss marching through town,
singing your anthem with drums,
trumpets, and pom-poms.

We’re real hijueputas:
the buy-it-alls, the curse-it-alls,
the send-most-your-money-back-alls,
the most-problematic-

most patriotic
away-from-home-alls, the pessimistic-
most-pessimistic cerotes of the world.

Homeland,
you’ve got to learn to love
the Nahuatl-Pipil-Lenca blood
running through you.

You’ve got to know
you’ll never be

a gringo.

Javier Zamora was born in La Herradura, El Salvador in 1990. When he was nine, he migrated to the United States. He is a scholarship recipient from Breadloaf, Napa Valley, Squaw Valley, VONA, and Yaddo; and holds fellowships from CantoMundo, Colgate University, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Zamora’s poems appear or are forthcoming in APR, Narrative, Ploughshares, POETRY, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. He is the winner of Meridian’s Editor’s Prize, CONSEQUENCE’s poetry prize, and the Organic Weapon Arts Chapbook Contest.