Breaking the Gauntlet

We thought the world
had finally changed,
that we could breathe
in the open air,
share forbidden
fountains,
unaware,
or perhaps unwilling
to sense
a turbulence
quelled
by a fragile gate,
subterranean
reservoirs
of hate
festering
in the darkness,
seething
through minute
fissures
until a mound
of ignorance
erupted;
how we wished
for an open road
instead,
a gauntlet
of oppression.

Our faces
emerged from mud
and maize
long before
that tragic
encounter,
before a purloined
race
was broken
in the fields,
before the great
divide
that never
fully mended:
then,
a single life
broke
the weir
of intolerance
and multitudes
flooded
the avenues,
irrepressible
voices,
waves upon waves,
and what is needed
most in these
renegade
streets,
more than beauty,
more than goodness
or faith,
more than love,
is a deep
understanding.

Robert René Galván, born in San Antonio, resides in New York City where he works as a professional musician and poet. His last collection of poems is entitled, Meteors, published by Lux Nova Press. He is a Shortlist Winner Nominee in the 2018 Adelaide Literary Award for Best Poem. Recently, his poems are featured in Puro ChicanX Writers of the 21st Century and in Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art and Thought. His next book of poems, The Shadow of Time, is forthcoming from Adelaide Books in 2021.