Farmworker as Existential Quantifier

That one waters
his mortgaged field

& becomes the water.
Another drinks the water

dissolving into drills.
The quickest one coffins

into the trench with his wife.
They are there so long

a plow gives them last rites.
A child is born on that

hottest day in mid-strike.
He swallows the crop

& waddles away a god.
Without any fuel workers

sell their own steam.
Their labors are packed

into a papoose & carried
off. One of them pours

the water onto his rags.
The rest of them catch

the wringed water
in their mouths.

:: Rodney Gomez, in Devil's Lake (Spring 2012)