Body of Rags, International Bridge Between…

Is it alive?
—neither a head,
legs nor arms!
...................
... torpid against
the flange of the supporting girder . ?
an inhuman shapelessness,
knees hugged tight up into the belly
Egg-shaped!
—William Carlos Williams, 1950 visit to El Paso, from “Desert Music”

Yes, I am a body of rags lying

here on the bridge waiting for

a hot rain to wash me open,

dissolve me off the bridge

because this border is closed.

I rot on the boundary line

and can’t enter Juarez,

pennies thrown at me

when a drunk El Pasoan

returns in the darkness

and sees my shape that

makes him hurry across.

No head, decades ago they threw

it in the river without my screams.

My arms were the first to go

when I couldn’t climb the wall.

I can never leave this bridge.

I live on the pure line that divides

countries and grabs my hunger

from sliding into Mexico with

my outstretched hands.

I still have my knees.

I used to be sold in Juarez and

smuggled into El Paso, the egg

that floated down the Rio Grande

to break hundreds of miles away

before being thrown back.

I stay on the bridge and can’t move.

Do not cross to El Paso without wiping

your shoes of me, one foot on US

concrete, the other scraping away

at my Mexican rags.

When I struggle against the wire fence,

I make sure I salute two flags.

Source: Poetry (March 2019)

Body of Rags, International Bridge Between the US & Mexico

Ray Gonzalez reads “Body of Rags, International Bridge Between the US & Mexico”