Fortress America
       

A finger around the trigger curls.
Boots bite the sand.
The dogs snatch black air
and tear it with each bark.

Something is sick here.
Just be very quiet. They'll go away.
Up the steel slat wall a man
climbs, then hand over hand

draws up his baby's basket
like a bucket of well-water.
Silver wings whiz above,
whirr buzz. But those are not birds.

Sometimes floodlights stab the dark.
A siren pierces like a vibrating pin.
The mash of boots, the clacking radios.
The moonlight's frozen silver.

Be very quiet, now. Please.
But it can't be swallowed.
A child's muffled coughs burst
from her mouth. They huddle

in glittering bundles, limbs wrapped
in cellophane against the desert cold.
Sometimes the border patrol finds them dead,
gleaming and still as fish on ice.

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Copyright © 2022 Tony Barnstone All rights reserved
from Poetry London
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission