Gutter Docket: May 15th, 2:00pm
And it would be easy to blame
the border as cultural instigator
of environmental treason
my common council
easier still
to scapegoat Mexicans
who live in this northern most Mexican city
so I blame
everyone
equally
even you common council
when I see another drifting plastic bag
another Bud Lite can
or another pile of tires baking in the sand
I see them as warnings
broken dolls
black garbage bags
the first is open
and the bones
the bones
the diapers tomatoes tacks spill out
the second closed
a baby? a body?
are you there
baby?
I’m curb watching
and car hearing
Helen
come for me
pick me up
head down
i see now
what you see
saw up and down
this walk
purple mitten
broken beer bottle
soda pop can
plastic bags
choking with styrofoam
that curls under our Cruces sun
Is it noon or one?
forgot my watch
my words of these items
you always said
“don’t look down”
“don’t look”
“don’t”
up in our last home
our last home
Helen
no, not Montana
not our walk
we always walked head down
eyes down
now there’s no amount of
mañana malaise
that remedies my agitation today
Helen
I walk these streets unfamiliar
the daily walk after lunch
lets me out by the road
I see disease carried along
monster trucks and Wal-Mart culture
and I quake
sputter inwardly
I have to
There is no value so
loathsome
as one that embraces
the throw away culture
I resist this
I have to
as our little world down
in the desert
has become
buried under Mexican flowers
that blossom willy-nilly along roadside
I blame everyone, equally.
We all have to share this blighted plot of land
We all have to stare at Organ mountains grand
trying to remember the Indian name for them
I can’t do it.
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