Exodus
.
If a body floats down the Rio Grande
if it scrapes over the sandbars
if it rolls over the river rocks
if the wading birds the fish
and the turtles don’t pick it clean if
the INS doesn’t fish it out if
the Federales don’t fish it out
if a surge doesn’t throw it up
on a bank if a leg doesn’t snarl
in a tree limb resting deep in the river
then that body will eventually reach
the Gulf of Mexico and the freedom
to wander the world’s oceans and nobody
will ever throw it in a cage or line it up
for a bus ride back to the perilous pueblo
where it once stuffed a change of clothes
into a shopping bag and said
Mama, I’m ready.
.
Tom Barlow is an Ohio author of poetry, short stories and novels. His poetry has appeared in journals including One Art, Ekphrastic Review, Voicemail Poetry, The North Dakota Quarterly, The New York Quarterly and The Modern Poetry Quarterly. See more at tombarlowauthor.com.
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