Evaporación: A Border History (2)
Paisanos we call
roadrunners brothers of the land
pacing the quebrada de humahuaca a dozen
Mexican corpses bloat
under desert sun
in cottonwoods by the river
zone-tailed hawks squeal— evidente
desde el aire
a crackled private runway
overlies
toxic waste unexploded
munitions booby-
trapped properties
bordered by purple and yellow
bloomstalks, lechuguilla, agave, cabuya,
volcanic chimneys up-thrust
from barren flats agleam
in a basalt outcrop tarantula-size
feldspar crystals the old raiding trails
from Comanchería convergen
en un estrecho sendero packed by hoofprints
Alarmed ki-dear ki-dear of a
Cassin’s kingbird on the
barbed fence 150 miles
surveilled by a tethered aerostat
que se parece una ballena (cielo abajo)
between those peaks
sits Panther Laccolith and both naked vaqueros
staked-out screaming on an ant hill
as the female katydid waves her foreleg tympanum
at the stridulating males the fine-
grained intrusion that veined the mountain
also silled Paint Gap Hill
su caballo tembla en agonía pinned to the ground by a lance
(and do you imagine that you yourself
don’t also live a life that’s no longer there?)
hovering over the field a flock of crested flycatchers (Clark’s
nutcrackers can’t hover) the border
patrol dog lifts its leg
at the tire of the filthy Skywagon (cielo abajo) all
windows down blasting
Hair Nation Radio for an audience of cercas de coachwhip
que van paralelas al camino Chihuahua
Trail following Alameda Creek we call it
horse-crippler cactus
Vietnam-era seismic probes
enterrados a través de tierras privadas
and lava-rock rims the sides oh
give it a break mockingbird
El Despoblado giant yucca and bunch grass
but what ventures into the afternoon heat? only Pharoah ants
only the insulated darkling beetle earth rising up
into particles too scattered to be called dust
en los dos lados del pavimiento magnetic sensors
registran movimiento y the direction of evening
cicadas eclipse tree crickets
a thousand head of cattle
driven below trachyte hoodoos where
it comes to nibble
a prickly pear: the cottontail at dusk
the human contraband at dusk famous
for their dwarf fauna estos estratos fósiles depositions of
carnage catches
of light our legacy
mission posted at each station a carcass of
the unspoken
aullando
Note: After a conversation with Lara Schoorl, Gander revisited the bilingual poem, “Evaporación,” published in Be With, determined to extend the poem into a sequence of variations, each adding more detail and each involving more Spanish. This is the second poem of the sequence.
CLOSE DISTANCE 