Lines Breaking

red pen in hand,
he tells me lines should
                                              break
in order to empha-
                                  size
certain words
like the ones in my family’s history:
first-
        shift
second-
        shift
third-
        shift,

that words are like the earth
            shifting
back and
            forth during an
earth-
            quake
& that verse has more meaning
when words can teeter-
                                        totter.

but as much as I try to
break the lines in their proper
                                                        poetic
                                                                      places
there are words
that I cannot separate,
like father, mother and child,

words that I cannot break again
like father and leaving, mother and deserting,
child and hurting,

words that stay together all by themselves,

like immigration, isolation, desolation.

José B. González

José was born in San Salvador, El Salvador, and emigrated to the United States at the age of eight. He received a BS from Bryant University, an MA from Brown University, and a PhD from the University of Rhode Island. González is the author of When Love Was Reels (Arte Público Press, 2017) and Toys Made of Rock (Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe, 2015). The recipient of a 2012 Fulbright Scholarship, he teaches at the United States Coast Guard Academy and lives in Quaker Hill, Connecticut.