by Jen Hofer

If you want Jen Hofer’s graphics I will send them to you separately
as they did not “cut and paste” into word pad file.

by Margaret Randall

Because I want to help my momma,
because my step dad hates me,
because there’s nothing for me at home,
because I want a new life,
a new me.

Already ghosts, Perro and El Gordo,
childhood friends
their voices woven of wind
and milpas that pass too quickly
blurring cold distances of hope.

Expectation strangles the young face,
disintegrates in the throat
of the nine year old girl from Honduras,
the nine year old boy beside her
who adds Si Dios lo permite
each time she whispers her dreams.

They already know about the Beta Brigade:
humanitarian Mexicans in red trucks
who tend to rotting toes
and warn against the dangers
of traveling north,
voices of trust
in a place where trust sickens and dies.

Throwing their scant bundles before them
they run to board the moving ladders
scramble for a spot
on careening projectiles
charge lush Mexican landscape
and sad villages where vendors
who know what hunger is
hand up free tacos
wrapped in pure love.
Roofs of freight trains thick with men,
some women
and 100,000 children a year
speed toward the glitter – spangled country
where Maybe I can study,
find a job,
make money,
buy a house for Momma,
have a different life.

Mountains and fields weave a dreamtime
coiled inside death’s stranglehold.
If you let your guard down
a tree branch will take an eye
sudden trestle split your head
and throw your mangled body
beneath la bestia:
front – page photo
in tomorrow’s tabloid.

There’s a mission at Coatzacoalcos,
another in San Luis Potosí
six to a bed but they give you a blanket
and small plate of rice and beans
to pretend away the fear
while a preacher warns:
Don’t trust the coyotes
who will take your money
leave you to die on the desert
one out of three won’t make it
be careful of the federales.

Children, lonely and frightened,
a thousand kilometers on
sometimes they give up,
turn themselves in,
go home
to the sad Guatemalan village,
rutted lane of Salvadoran shacks,
Honduran mother who cries with joy
for the son come back alive
weeps in sorrow
because she knows he’ll try again.

Carlos’s last ride is a sealed coffin,
his body found on the desert
too decomposed
to comfort parents
who only want to see their baby
one last time.
Manuel has long been
a question with no answer
for the desperate family
who puts its trust
in the Virgin Mother and her Son.

A few will get lucky,
avoid the police trap at Lechería
organized crime at the border
La migra
and that insatiable desert
separating one last reserve of will
from the sheltering shadows
of some U.S. city

where they’ll learn new ways to survive
share a slum room
make more money than they’ve ever seen,
send some of it home:
tender ghosts among the poorest of the poor
in a country that needs their labor
and hates their guts.

by Margaret Randall

A great tree falls on a downed power line
and this time
the fire is dubbed accidental:
Cerro Grande, Las Conchas,

no resources spared in a month
of smoke – clogged sky
and the people of Los Alamos
finally breathe relief,

return to their homes, the menace
of that other accident
still stirring memory.
PTSD common as the common cold.

To the southeast at Santa Clara,
beyond the Jémez
they drain two irrigation ponds
of water foul with dead fish.

The ditchwater in Hernández is also black
and plants grow slowly
thirsty for the nitrogen
cowering in sweet – scented legends.

One burned elk comes into a garden
is about to speak
then falls over and dies.
We wait for wind to sing his funeral dirge.

One list holds the language of death:
Oso Complex, Dry Lakes,
South Fork, Las Conchas, Cerro Grande.
Like broken thunder it overtakes

that other list: Cochiti Mesa, Puye, P’opii Khanu.
Turkey Girl is orphaned again
gathering charges
who starve in secret canyons.

An ash cloud rises in air
we cannot breathe.
People say they saved Los Alamos
and let Santa Clara burn.

At the edges of the pueblo
all our ancestors weep.

by Margaret Randall

Downwind from Pecos, cedar scent
invades our nostrils,
transparent as sky’s unreachable blue

until this cloud that is not cloud
but poison plume,
smoke rising imminent on horizon’s shoulder,

reminds us Los Alamos is on fire
again
its people ordered to leave again

just as eleven years ago, ordered
to leave
in that orderly fashion, lines of

careful cars, each keeping its
distance
from the one in front.

Voracious cloud, chewing mountain ridge,
spews ash,
menacing orange glows in its bloated belly,

30,000 55 – gallon drums of nuclear waste

wait restive
as flames advance and leap,

and other fatal chemicals cross their fingers
in this game
of Russian roulette.

Spokesmen look directly into the camera
force eyes
to focus, say there’s nothing

to worry about: like Fukushima Daiichi,
or Fort Calhoun
trembling on the banks of the rising Missouri,

before them Chernobyl and Three Mile Island:
each time bomb
dressed in the reassuring lie

until blood drains from noses and ears
skin buckles

and internal organs trip over themselves

in their rush to an exit whose door
melts
before we reach its threshold of deliverance.