The Wall
Naco, Arizona 2007

Expecting an offense, you’ll find an
invitation—the wall, thin and black
as the jaguar it wouldn’t keep out.
A wall to discourage only
the lazy or ill, it culls
the herd. It calls, “Come in.
Come over. Bring your beautiful
young backs to our overgrown
gardens, dusty homes and fields glowing red
with berries and a noonday sun.

“Bring us your desperation, the hollow
reed of your hope. Bring us
the wild, prowling hunger of
your homelands, yearning for dignity,
for a place in this world.

“We light the lamps of a thousand
searchlights burning like the desert
sun by night. We greet you with
our well-fed young men and women,
one, two or three generations beyond
yours, whose mothers, grandmothers
fled the heat of wars, the hunger borne of
another’s greed. We greet you
with young men and women, whose skin,
the same copper or bronze of yours, prowl the desert
like predators, armed with English
and American birth certificates,
Pase adelante—come in,
if you can.”

Rebecca del Rio