REWRITING THE BORDER

by David Chorlton

It’s doves and thorns and sunsets
all the way into night, and blue mountains
float away at dusk. The border
isn’t what it used to be, no
Spanish is the Lovin’ Tongue or Marty Robbins
riding out of El Paso. Used to be
a line between the cowboy sky
and shops whose colors overflow
to make tourists feel as happy
as they couldn’t be at home. A hawk still hovers
with each wing in a different country
and ravens cross over with ease when they
dip and dive for joy, but there are
no visas for the jaguars
drawn by the scent of survival. Twenty pesos
for a dollar, undocumented sunlight,
new lives for old and corridos
from the radio playing
on an August roof in Phoenix. Taco Tuesday
in El Norte, deportation
on the menu every day. A flag of wind
still flying west of Lukeville, hammer tap
in a mechanic’s workshop, trucks
with hearts of steel between
Brownsville and Tijuana, highway never
sleeping, flan for dessert. A family lost
and a Rufous-capped warbler
in southern Arizona, slow river
leading a line of cheap labor
to the interstate; wasn’t that a time
when water was the passport
for anybody carrying their first home
in their pockets. Cheap labor on the move,
supply and demand, a cupful of rain
for a day digging fields. A trogon
calling from the oaks and sycamores. Summer 
is his time before the sky opens;
fly south, fly north, never fly at all
for fear that dreams
come only in translation.

David Chorlton is a longtime resident of Phoenix who continues to learn what he can from the desert about writing and art as well as the natural world. 

EL BORDO

by Kristina England

Image source: Mexodus

‘South Texas businessman [and Texas Senate candidate] Chris Mapp, 53, told this editorial board that ranchers should be allowed to shoot on sight anyone illegally crossing the border on to their land, referred to such people as “wetbacks,” and called the president a “socialist son of a bitch.”’--The Dallas Morning News editorial (16 February 2014) endorsing Sen. John Cornyn.

My aunt loves to eat Mexican food
so we go out for dinner,
order guacamole, flautas, fajitas.
None of it is authentic,
but what is these days?

My aunt asks the waitress where she's from,
how to say "you're welcome" in Spanish,
then says "Gracias" about nine times.
If we were at any other restaurant,
she'd complain about poor English,
that it's a God-given right to be American.

My aunt knows nothing about El Bordo
or the displaced people living there,
deported by our government,
left between two countries
in a land full of sewage and trash,
most having lived in America so long
they are unable to speak with Tijuana.
Tired, hungry, they walk the border,
no longer sure which direction is home,

while my aunt, red in her politics,
fills her belly with wine and beans,
stumbles over the words "De nada,"
her language gnarled by barbed wire,
disjointed, misplaced.


Kristina England resides in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her fiction and poetry is published or forthcoming at Gargoyle, The New Verse News, The Story Shack, The Quotable, and other magazines. Her first collection of short stories will be published in the 2014 Poet's Haven Author Series.