☀ Today's Poem: "Los Toritos" Mark Levine

When the little bulls, so-called, rained down
From passing rainclouds like little bullets
Unexploded, wishing only
To scrub themselves away on their armored backs
In postures of surrender;
When we, trainees, young men and boys
With imperfectly formed morals, flipped them
Onto their sticky ridged bellies
With wooden spoons, then nudged them
Toward the drylands, only to return
Hours later from evening drills
To find them back on their backs,
Pedaling crooked limbs like antique toys
About to wind down, to snap shut the turnkey
Driven deep in their bellies;
When the bony concrete verandah
Of our bungalow and those of the empty adjacent
Bungalows from which wind radiated
Were speckled suddenly with dull pools
Marking the end of dry season
And the pools swam with upended little bulls
Who could not be made by any means to go on living
And even crows
Stayed away from them, even the militant beady ants
Who had risen from the ground
Would not strip their remains
Or carry them away
In opalescent flakes, no, well by then
We had finished our drills
And were moving on. Done with mandatory tasks,
Done polishing
The ceremonial scalloped horns
That marked us for what we were,
The little language we got by on
Wasn't much but was enough
To carry us down the ravine,
And solids and liquids had passed through us
While the living leaves and flowers had stopped needing us.
Dogs and pushcarts, whirring children, motorbikes, vans
In the rutted paths, there was
No asking what woke us
In the rain, what morning today was,
What destination. Some ornamental
Piece off our wrist had been
Snatched, a bracelet or timepiece,
As we awaited our lift,
Some piece from our pack had been sold off,
Some other piece in us had misgivings
And went back inside where things
Of questionable being go.