FLORICANTO ISSUE Oscar Bermeo   THE ICE WORKER LIVES the neighbors of noah are everywhere  pachuco children  pawn their hearts  wander the streets stricken   with solitude aztlánian nights the sentences have rippled too far  the mind underneath—beating  veil me we can always replenish  never again   we will be cold about brother  blood home from a war  my voice in dreams  converses with tangled roots and vines i’ve come to thinking of the words  there is no more appropriate insult than  vindictive  even with the dead  who laugh with the last say touch the single tree, the tendon  find a language  line up to receive an allotted portion of   bone, a thin impression of cloth working to restore  still waters  shadows tempting you  perhaps this is foolish talk worked in a factory for years  parted ways  ten years later, it still moves one word  scream that word  whatever that word darkness paints and blots  one learns  the rise and fall of night  blessed be the way still an immediate presence  still having trouble writing that poem  pleased to make a beautiful thing  a fragile casket  hatched in a shallow dish plucking the seeds  fruit  fermenting on the ground call out the ice worker  and all of his songs  i’ll go now to the sun hungry for the familiar  when in his dreams  his children take features  smell the greasy condemnation demanding my attention  repent, the revolution   is at hand  i betrayed like judas  birthplace of my fathers  language—simple and undisturbed  olvidate not enough whitman  i see you all here, I see whitman see me victorious  my children, a cracked window i am reminded of montoya  the steel scars  the shadows of warehouses close your eyes for one minute  it’s not long  meat, forgotten  turning rancid  looking to mend the wound  suffering synonymous with joy verse, outside of himself  love, i didn’t hear it the first time  again—love, again—love, again what language do you give?  do you know how he would praise?   {Poem comprised of lines from all the readers at the In the Grove Issue #16 release party celebrating the life and poetry of Andrés Montoya]   Born in Ecuador and raised in the Bronx, Oscar Bermeo is the author of four poetry chapbooks, most recently, To the Break of Dawn. He has been a featured writer at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Kearny Street Workshop, Bronx Academy of Letters, Rikers Island Penitentiary, UNC-Chapel Hill, and NYU. Recent poems appear in Bestiary Magazine, CrossBRONX, Generations Magazine, Milvia Street Journal, and phat'itude Literary Magazine. He has taught creative writing workshops to at-risk youth in the Bronx, foster teens in San Jose, bilingual elementary school students in Oakland, and to adults through the Oakland Public Library's Oakland Word program. Bermeo makes his home in Oakland, with his wife, poeta Barbara Jane Reyes.  His website: www.oscarbermeo.com.   Published in Volume 13, Number 1, Winter 2012.