"Justino" by Ryan Brown

"Justino"

By Ryan Brown

It took him forty-eight years

to become a dishwasher

at Pita Jungle.

Nine bucks an hour,

thirty-some hours a week,

sweat pouring off his brow

to mask the exhaustion of a face

that is no longer concerned with fairness.

He is here, everyday,

fingers to the grindstone,

tougher than the forgotten beef jerky

in some badass rebel biker's

leather jacket pocket.

He is the Zen master,

the rush without the hurry,

too grateful for what he has

and for that, 

he does not blend in there,

but this is one of his high points.

Justino does the dirty work

in a restaurant that expects

wine glasses to sparkle

like they haven't been whored out

to fifty colors of lipstick

in the last two weeks alone.

When you can't speak English

or read in any language

but the blue, green, 

and orange tongues of dish soap,

it is difficult to embellish

your minimal education on a job application,

where only a name and previous work experience

sweat off the page,

as if about to be interrogated 

by bitter men in blue uniforms.

"Quiero trabajar."

"Quiero estar contento"

and in Arizona there is a chance, 

there are truckloads of wasted food,

and it is far easier to feed a backbone

whose vertebrae have the weight of

an entire family hanging on

for survival.

This is one of his high points, 

and at five-foot-five

Justino still reaches like a summit.

He was raised ten sniper-scope

magnifications away from an America 

that will cross the ocean

armed and blindfolded

to siphon a stranger's oil,

but won't speak patiently

with the next door neighbors about

changes that need to happen

on our shared soil.

His existence isn't waist-deep 

in politics anymore;

this is all too human for puppet shows now.

It all happened in a cluster of struggle

before he could choose the outcome of the story

through a ballot box,

so he wrote it with the distance

between two constitutions,

determined as the sun

to run circles around us.

He exercises patience everyday,

arms unwinding only after 10 p.m.,

thousands of miles and light years from childhood,

the Sahara breathing sand 

on each country's land,

but we aren't supposed to know

we have this much in common.

The invisible particles of a hundred wasted dinners

cling to his skin like the smog smothering 

both Downtown Phoenix and Mexico City.

His fists are iron 

and have been crushing minutes 

into nickels since he was 9 years old.  

He is 48 going on 60

going on "what-did-all-these-years-evaporate-into?"

like he ever had a choice,

like he wasn't born into making things easier

for people who never had it hard.

The grindstone always looks like a rolling highway

when you've got your face pressed against it,

and 50 years from now,

his skin will be so

wrinkled and rough and wise,

it won't even be real.

Some Americans are still compelled

to resist a society where different nationalities 

are forced to cooperate peacefully.

They hate the idea so much,

that sometimes, 

they even write an email about it,

or a bill.

But his time is too precious for the bias 

of blue comfort and hungry fear.

He wants only to give a piece

of this world to his family,

and in a place where people

would rather have the world

handed to them, 

he does one hell 

of a job.

Ryan Brown is a poet's poet in every sense of the word. The mountain town of Flagstaff is known for a poetry slam scene where poets come together as a community, and  Brown was at the center of the growth as the FlagSlam Poetry Slam's slammaster from 2008 to 2012.

Brown attended four National Poetry Slam competitions as a member of the FlagSlam team in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2012, getting as far as the semi-finals round in 2009. At the helm of Flagstaff's slam scene, Brown brought in featured poets such as Andrea Gibson and Gypsee Yo to help reinvigorate the poetry community in a town still bursting with poetic flavor a decade late.

An English major at Northern Arizona University, Brown collaborated often with poets such as Frank O'Brien, John Cartier and Sedona's Jessica Guadarrama and Christopher Fox Graham. He writes with the future in mind, his poems often revolving around the intimacy of human relationships.

After graduating with an English degree from NAU in 2012, Brown taught English in South Korea. He now lives in Nashville, Tenn.