The very first bullet continues.
Vente, into the blood. Need not
be clinched like a tortoise’s shell
to its body. Wriggle out
that closed door
to scrutiny. Return
to Fact, squatting
under a gash
of light. You smear
their voices—
calcified
& yellow
like watercolors.
Mouths a sad flood:
It was just a dream.
This casual murder. This impasse.
A mother’s clamp of neck.
Enough light falling through
as a camp shower. I instruct
you to stay here, in your long
white dress. Wet and mortified:
today is tomorrow & you can’t throat help.

Jeanine Cummins’s novel American Dirt was published in 2020, with a colossal initial print run of 500,000 copies. It received considerable attention and criticism, largely for its misrepresentation of Mexico. This poem is an erasure of the book’s first chapter.