I set up meetings in Congress today
for a woman searching for bodies
along the Mexican border.
I sit very comfortably in my chair.
I don’t search for bodies.
I search for hours. For words.
Digging in dirt with a family member,
digging for bones is what she does.
These aren’t the deaths from heatstroke
or thirst in the desert.
These are the murders
cartels, coyotes, the police and soldiers
commit. Deported from the US,
shunted back to Mexico, they are
killed by the same coyotes they paid.
It is said Mexico has a war on its own
poor. This is true. This I believe.
Young men, if poor, are arbitrarily detained
in Ciudad Juarez, tortured to force
a confession, jailed, removed that way
from the gene pool.
The US has a war on the world’s poor.
The jail they are placed in, arbitrarily,
is Mexico. There, with customary swiftness,
with little menace to us, at no cost
they vanish. Haitians, Central Americans,
Venezuelans, Cubans, all quiet now,
soil where the mouth
was, where the soul was
that wanted to speak.