THIS IS WHERE WE ARE BORN (#5)
We rise up from childhood like birds
become first thirteen, then fifteen, sixteen
discover corners, backyards, walls
we burn cardboard and planks
in the newspapers we find
accounts of the cartels, in the autumn
nearly fifty corpses are found at a shopping centre
and the public prosecutor is portrayed
with piercing glances in his office, the city
is to host a national conference, Falken is on TV
we see him in the display window
twenty-odd screens show the red head
the mouth that gapes
and assures the population;
the police and army are busy, working night and day
to localize gangs, the day after two headless
corpses are found less
than five hundred yards
from the defence ministry, the newspaper
has pictures of states, ghost towns,
mass graves and the desert
we lie down
to sleep under bridges, we become a year older and forget
to be a year older, eat once every three days
the summer is cold and damp
full of fights under the sign by motorway x
we are princes and princesses, paperless
mercurial kids who dig anywhere
for debris, we travel in to the cities
we sell beads and earrings
now and then we cross the borders, what we own
in plastic bags and bundles
we smell, we know our feet
stink
our armpits and hands
rough as leather
our fingernails
ready to claw, defend, scrape up the future
that slurps down pneumonias and dirty mattresses
we sit perfectly still
outside the shopping centres and beg
with the signs round our necks
help me
I am hungry
pregnant, have two little ones
to look after, please
in the evenings we tell stories from our home districts, one of us
lived near an airport, grew up carrying suitcases
between cab and departure hall, another
talks about trawlers and the sea and his eyes become yellow and shiny
when night closes in
around us
like an even bigger night, we are called Josefina
Domingo, Rodriguez, we stand at the gates of a city
we recognize from a postcard, from the soap series
that is broadcast in the afternoons
which Marisol sometimes sees at the home of someone who pays her
for God knows what
we are called Elias, Rita, Ava,
lean against the wall, against eighty thousand switched-off lights
under the bridge the year it rains
the year when the water flows and flows
one of us says
the drops are big as turtles and we look up
at that grey sky
grey as the concrete floor
grey as the silence after curfew
like our own coughing
after being beaten senseless by a gang
of monkeys outside a pharmacy
we cringe
trembling birds
become sixteen, twenty, then it does not matter
if we stink of piss and blood, burn cardboard and planks
the future is inflammations, gangrene and shame
we hide our faces
we feed like rats, at night
we feed children who eat
with our mouths
who dig with our nails
and hunger with our hunger