River Ghost

Little Chihuahita shadowed beside Segundo barrio. A dead German sheperd with a broken neck lies on the side of the street for days. The stench of El Paso’s sewage in the air, a Mexican flag hugely flaps itself above the chain-linked fence topped with razor wire. In the morning blue mountains smog. South side of the border a man jogs. The river’s bank green, small trees bob in the wind like truffle-treats, mirage. Each day thousands cross the open bridge, both ways, each night they go home to sleep silence. Cars hum and wait for hours like sleeping cats. A cemented river half-dried, even the canal drains away. Some say droves of shadows at night move ghost-like through the dying river. These people grow invisible, as if air, irrelevant and holy; at night I can hear the whisper of my grandfather, “all the angels live in Juárez.” There is an old language broken in my throat. Some eyes mistake me for shadow. When I speak my voice a fearful phantom. In spring dust storms come, the sky browns, my visage half-forms beneath the Italian cypress; and when the day’s moon is full in its silence, I am afraid of my own darkness.