Border Crossing

There is no sky or earth

in the white van that crosses me over,

nor in the drywall coop painted red

where white men with tattooed arms

stood up and sit down, up and down,

unleashed erections pivoting

and searching for the best angle

to penetrate my forever painful ass.

–

I am called “pollo”, chicken,

“nuevo carne”, new meat

by the coyote who drove me

and the gringos who maul me,

their millet dollars tossed into hands

waiting unsmiling at the ajar door,

passage paid with my legs,

eggs for pollos not eaten.

–

Across the hall I hear the cackling

of men orgasming into torn sheets,

a softer clucking than the maras gangs

of Tegucigalpa roosting the food market

and the barrios for virgin violators.

In Honduras anyone can murder

a woman and nothing will happen.

At least, in Texas they bury you.

–

They promise half of half of half of profits,

less than 50 pesos, dollars on a $50 John.

They dress me in corpse rags that

stink of gasoline and last menstruation;

feed me grain, maize, rain barrel water.

My nakedness kills fleeing for freedom.

Nobody will risk saving a puta, whore

from a charcoal window stash house.

–

I dreamed once I could wear silk dresses

or richly sew them together for a small,

life with a good man and brown-eye kids.

The Chinese girl smuggled in from Fuzhou

can aspire to own a nail salon, or work

a massage parlor run by Sister Ping’s heirs.

Biloxi runaways can traffic on NY dreams.

I have only violation and suicide.

–

I traveled the border crossing between

Tegucigalpa and the American Dream,

enough to forget why I crossed over,

times enough until I wasn’t me anymore,

to pace back and forth, scratch at

and settle in the straw of forgetfulness,

American in I have a heavy debt

that only heaven can release.