The Rio Grande Gorge from above. Courtesy of Sheila McClune/flickr.
From space the river is loose thread. Frayed but clearly discernible.
A wall but not a wall.
At county, a jailer winds it around his neck. Surrenders to unconditional embrace.
Some will use it for labyrinth. Others for escape as night dictates.
At the old Fort Brown emptied when a white woman cried that a black battalion had committed the crime
of supposing the air could also be theirs a room sparks as if drowned by gasoline.
Murder is too nice a word
for what was baptized in the water.
Now, at the little church overlooking despair, a new kind of invasion replaces the old.
Children in sisal sandals.
Old guns call new guns to scour the shore.
In false panic
there is no such thing as empathy.