La Frontera
by David Allen Sullivan

Metal pylons were
rammed into hard desert clay
for a border fence.

Reverberations
agitated owls and drove
jackrabbits deeper.

Now, scrap wood ladders
are hidden beneath mesquite,
there for the next group.

Flags of torn ribbon
adorn the barb wire cordon.
Plastic water jugs line trails.

Cast-off clothing
fills arroyos, illegals
shed them so they don’t

look like they’ve trekked miles—
they have. They hope the coyote
knows what he’s doing,

that the weather holds,
that there is an end. Panties,
stretched from branch to branch

above the drop point
are stained: others have been here,
others paid the price.

La Frontera – David Allen Sullivan

David Sullivan’s first book, Strong-Armed Angels, was published by Hummingbird Press, and two of its poems were read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac. Every Seed of the Pomegranate, a multi-voiced manuscript about the war in Iraq, is forthcoming in June, 2012 from Telbot Bach. He teaches at Cabrillo College, where he edits the Porter Gulch Review, and lives in Santa Cruz with his love, the historian Cherie Barkey, and their two children, Jules and Mina Barivan.