Hector son of Hector is an Oakland poet. He is a child of Mexican immigrants, works in a hospital, dreams of short stories and writes poems in secret.
the iceworker arrives
with a pick still in his hand
thick fingers covering the wooden handle
the ice worker arrives frozen
in a cube of petrified water
his eyes looking up
his lips mid sentence
a chicana physician from modesto
puts her stethoscope to the ice
she hears a heart beat
slow rhythmic and pleasant
he was found behind shelves of ignored books
at the local library
underneath the air conditioner
a young brown girl spotted his warm open eyes
while she curiously peered through the silenced poems
“no one ever told me about these when I was in school”
she kept saying to the medics
when they approached the ice worker
ivs and defibrillators and monitors are useless
this man needs power sockets to plug in space heaters
we turn the thermostat on high and one pitcher at a time
dump boiling water over the perfectly clear cube of ice
we work diligently for hours
our clothes soaked and feet cold
our shoes making that squishy sound
splattering melted ice on all the equipment
meant for the dying trauma patients
the cube full of craters and cracks
still looks as immense as when it first arrived
when we suddenly hear a ding that stops us
we note the ice worker is within a glass box
frozen still
and through the stethoscope
we can no longer hear his heart
just the echoes of the all the songs he sung
