Borderlands (a poem) – Occupied Tucson Citizen

Carlos Fuentes said there is not
a border with Mexico

but only a scar, a suppurating scar.
Perhaps he did not wish

to remind us that more blood
is flowing, soaking into sand

or staining the rocks. From the air
the Border Patrol spots the bodies—

unwelcome migrants invading
the land that was once theirs.

To the West is a swift-moving
death trap, an irrigation ditch

fed by the Colorado River,
and many are drowned there

while the authorities smirk
and say it is their own fault.

Many are never identified and have
only numbers for epitaphs.

Mummified bodies are routinely found

under mesquites and paloverdes—

no one to claim them in the land of the free.