WEBVTT

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This next poem is actually about
a trip I made to a cemetery

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in Nogales.

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It's a Jewish cemetery
that basically

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buries the dead of
the Jews of Nogales

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and it's called Border Cemetery.

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The flower covered
broken sidewalk greets me

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at the border cemetery.

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We are each a territory of one.

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The slow memories
of place and mood

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dissolve the mass
of gathered family.

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Chanting ritual to wake us, we
wait the coming conversations.

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They spiral and pierce us.

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The chosen one heavily
perfumed taciturn

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leads us to the
backyard of her youth,

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banishes the contempt
between the loving

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families that lie here.

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The living continue the myth
of their blood surrender

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to a world passed by
interstates, malls,

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and a political geography
more definitive than

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any reservation, any ocean.

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Drowsily, we listen
to the witness

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in the night wishing again to
dance with a childhood friend.

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Plump cheek, curly haired,
telling simple narratives.

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Her only inheritance wrapped
in hand-me-down langer.

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She was loved in the fashion
of modern office masculinity

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marked by the savvy
slights of counted silence.

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Beginning a repeated
spiritual destruction,

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welcome to the empty banquet
with preordained eloquence.

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She cannot leave this
smooth antique neighborhood

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of the dead.

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She stares at the
overgrown garden

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when the guests
have gone, knowing

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she will be buried with family
alone, battered for having

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kept this barren lookout.