I have  a backbone –   when I’m in unfamiliar surroundings I’m a stoic
I have  a backbone –   when I’ve swallowed a snake
I have  a backbone –   when I lie on the road’s dividing line
I have  a backbone –   when I winter in the tree wearing my father’s coat
I have  a backbone –   when I lean on eternity’s boundary marker
                                         my face turned toward the sun’s udder
I have  a backbone –   when I walk barefoot in the hospital ward
I have  a backbone –   when the shaman shoots it at the squirrel     
I have  a backbone –   when I embrace the trolley station’s pole
                                         without a schedule
I have  a backbone –   when at midnight I sacrifice my sweat to
                                         Tlazolteotl
my       backbone –        a ladder to the anthill tower  
my       backbone –        a hair broken by a nail
my       backbone –       the lamancha of catastrophe uniting father and                                                    mother
my       backbone –        a boulder crushing roller
                                          pulled farther offshore by seals
my       backbone –        a poison gas capsule swallowed by the sea
                                          only a hanger for keys to the morgue of loneliness
my       backbone –        a pole of sulphur sulfide in the pit of the ocean
                                          around which in the lava’s light dance drunken                                                  mollusks
my       backbone –        in the grass of childhood watered by dungwash
                                         when with my brother clinging to lapels
                                         we shook down the lights in the August dusk
                                         we buried them
                                         we were successful I wasn’t seen
                                         that was the case