Border triptych
Three poems for the Borderlands.
For the past fifteen years, six days a week, at half past eight,
Jorge has biked into my checkpoint station. He hawks
over his papers, allows me to examine his lunch box,
& then wheels off to his twelve hour shift at the pallet & crate
factory. I’m close to madness. I suspect
he’s been smuggling contraband, prescription or illegal.
He sports new toupees under a cap depicting an eagle
devouring a snake. He rides spit-shined bikes that I inspect
by taking them apart, checking inside the hollow
pipes, sometimes slicing open the tires, but so far, nothing.
Jorge always remains calm, & doesn’t say a damn thing.
Yesterday, a few days from my retirement, I swallowed
my pride, & swore, if he told me the truth, to keep my lips tight.
The bastard smiled, & casually replied, I smuggle bikes.
INS transcript, Sofia: I kept my mother’s advice
to myself. Before crossing the Tijuana/San Diego border,
in a bathroom stall, I sprinkled gelatin powder
on my underwear. We slipped through a fence like mice
& waited in a neighborhood park. Hourly, vans
arrived, & we were packed in, driven up river-wide asphalt
toward families, jobs. Sweat soaked our clothes, salted
our skin. Suddenly we stopped on an isolated road. Bandits
stepped from the trees. The men were forced face down
in a ravine. The women were ordered to undress at gunpoint.
I unbuckled my belt, lowered my jeans. Sweat,
gelatin powder had stained my underwear a reddish brown.
I was one of ten women. Our mouths were taped.
I was spit on. I was slapped. The other women were raped.
Sapo & I wait for the cool of night under mesquite.
Three days in the desert & we’re still too close to Mexico,
still so far from God. Sapo’s lips so dry he swabs the pus leaking
from the ampollas on his toes across his mouth. I flip a peso.
Heads: we continue. Tails: we walk toward the highway,
thumb our way back to Nogales. The peso disappears into a nest
but the hard-on in Sapo’s jeans, slightly curved, points west.
I catch a cascabel & strip off its meat. Sapo mutters, No que no güey.
I bury its forked tongue: for one night our names won’t flower
in the devil’s throat. We’re Indios but no grin-
go will mistake us for Navajos. Above us an owl grins
like Cantinflas. The arms of the saguaros strike down the hours
but the sun refuses to set. Sapo shits behind a cluster of nopales,
& shouts out our favorite joke, No tengo papeles!
for Gloria Anzaldúa
Eduardo C. Corral is the author of Slow Lightning, which won the 2011 Yale Series of Younger Poets. He is currently the writer-in-residence at North Carolina State University.