They are night shadows violating borders.
fingers curled through chain-link fences,
hiding from infra-red eyes, dodging 30-30 bullets,
They leave familiar smells, warmth and sounds,
as ancient as the trampled stones.
Running to America.
There is a woman in her finest border-crossing wear:
A purple blouse from an older sister,
a pair of worn shoes from a church bazaar,
a tattered coat from a former lover.
There is a child dressed in black,
fear sparkling from dark Indian eyes,
clinging to a headless Barbie doll.
And the men, some hardened, quiet,
Others young and loud—you see something
like this in prisons. Soon they will cross
on their bellies, kissing black earth,
then run to America.
Strange voices whisper behind garbage cans,
beneath freeway passes, next to broken bottles.
The spatter of words, textured and multi-colored,
invoke demons.
They must run to America.
Their skin, color of earth, is a brand
for all the great ranchers, for the killing floors
on Soto Street and as slaughter
for the garment row. Still they come:
A hungry people have no country.
Their tears are the grease of the bobbing machines
that rip into cloth
that make clothes
that keep you warm.
They have endured the sun’s stranglehold,
el cortito, foundry heats and dark caves
of mines, swallowing men.
Still they come, wandering bravely
through the thickness of this strange land’s maddening ambivalence.
Their cries are singed with fires of hope.
Their babies are born with a lion
in their hearts.
Who can confine them?
Who can tell them
which lines never to cross?
For the green rivers, for their looted gold,
escaping the blood of a land
that threatens to brown them,
they have come,
running to America.
(2001)