at the border

your legs may want to forget the name of this place, forget

how you rolled into it and swallowed its rain. for

what place wants to vomit you out? what place burns into your skin

and says that you are an embodiment of things cracked and squashed?

this place does not know how to hold the peoples in it. it fills

mouths with flowers grown at the graveside. at the border your

name may become a gallery of run. run. run is not a verb.

run is a name for safety. a name for not dying. a name for holding sun

& moon. at the border your tongue may want to lose the taste of this place.

for what place doesn’t want to stay with the night and day. what place grows

bodies backward. grows fire and bombs. and words from its radios and televisions

are lists of found and unknown limbs and bones. this place knows corridors

plastered with red and coarse paintings. at the border you may want

everything wrong with this place as a memory burnt at the feet of amen.