The San Antonio Night Crossing
“... The closeness of the place and the heat of the climate,
added to the number in the ship which was so crowded
that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost
suffocated us."
Olaudah Equiano, freed slave, abolitionist, merchant (1745-1797)
We were taken in by roundup-
legends of freedom, sold
heirlooms to pay for the privilege of being
crammed into a tractor-trailer like green-
ware into a kiln. The youngest
faithfully lifted her chin, Quinceañera
memories still fresh enough to almost keep
her balanced within that shifty,
blistering dark until she felt
another sharp shaft of air, a searing blast
of a bone-dry wheeze from the next pilgrim to hit
hot metal like he’d been shot in the head.
The chant began again, Santa María,
Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros
pecadores. Sweat stung our opened eyes,
clarified visions of diaspora, of coldblooded
coyotes packing cargo holds with cornered chattel.
We, the many, shackled by migrant irons. We,
a crop of people, survive only to swelter later
in tobacco rows, on countless estates, behind thick shop doors,
but each Day of the Dead, we will recount:
Mexicans lost to a hardened
geography where even breath is branded,
an absence of just one half-mast flag, anywhere, their star-
crossed national anthem, our costly escape
into undocumented slavery, how long-
suffering dreams either suffocate or hide
scars, why wheeled sloops blaze down border
highways with short-lived payloads, scammed commodities
as expendable as a shipment of spring lambs ...
Copyright © Cyndi Macmillan | Year Posted 2017
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