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Vernacular
Kate MacVean
Province of San Luís Potosí, Mexico
They are playing games with language,
laughing when I cannot follow their tongues
clicking through the consonants of náhuatl.
Hacahuillamitl, they tell me,
means "tree."
I learn new Spanish words for shovel,
pick, blister. Later, with an axe,
they show me how to find the grain:
"the wood wants to be cut here."
At night the stars we look for are
estrellas fugaces;
without the violence of our shooting stars
or the sadness of our falling ones,
they are fleeting
simply there, and then not.
Seconds before I do, Cami hears the rain
advancing in a sheet from the mountain;
she calls a warning, two quick words:
llega atl
In the time it takes to translate
"the water is coming"
I am already wet.
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