Central American Boys

They the product they pack,

     chronic culprit in love with bullets

          plucked like stars.

They the glance at each other

      crossing the street, the way they know

          their fathers will never come back.

     Profanity, yes. Illiterate, ill-nourished,

          

          most of them, most definitely. In addition

           the brilliant genesis of Odysseus.

They small ghosts

     

     like pale plates of water abandoned

          under the brush. It might as well

          be a jar of snares          mosquitoes

              damn mosquitoes to get rid of,

              draining the blood for eggs.

They

                                     the memory of a stowaway

                                     hitting the ground again

                                     and again.