Obituaries for the Unnamed
I forget my own grief writing obituaries
for the unnamed. A mass grave in Ciudad Juárez
takes fifty more bodies this morning, the gluttonous desert
opening daily its appetite. In a dream, I wander
into a cave staked with corpses. I produce imprints
of their faces in my mind. I want to
save them from this brutal coil
of forgetting. How many of their names their loved ones
cried? How long ago? I dig deeper into the cave,
my brain swollen with faces, & their blood
pools up my ankles. Listen, the ones whose tongues
have not been severed want to tell us
their stories: late one night, a woman climbs
a bus back home from the maquila & ends
toothless & muzzled in a ditch. She’s mothered
a boy without a father, celebrated
her twentieth birthday in her mother’s house
with cake & cold Coronas. A father leaves
his son & wife to cross the desert
in the hollowed bottom of a truck. His gut hisses in the sun
-stunned metal, fighting other bodies for a breath.
Whatever air he wins is stale with piss.
The truck halts &, quiet, he waits, & waits &—
The dream ends. I shower. Rinse the salt
off my back. I drink black coffee. Eat cereal. I listen
to the news. Again, a mass grave opens in Ciudad Juárez,
& out there, another body flecks the desert’s mouth.