Para Nuestras Perdidas Muertas

Just in rememberance....

Para nuestras perdidas muertas

#156 had long black hair, dark skinned,
eyes brown
#208 made four dollars a day
#289 worked the late shift…
had a long dark walk home.
#315 wanted to be a movie star

then another
y otra
una mas
and there will be more pink crosses
marking lamp posts, bus stops, dark alleys
where stars of innocent eyes vanished
where vampires prey on faraway dreams.
dreams turn daggers
leaving scores of vacant bodies,
sacrificed
with cut-off breasts, disembowled, torn, beat
left with no trace of face and teeth
left ripped from the inside
souls caged…our little birds
and no sound.

From pueblos, hungry farms, and wastelands
These birds flock to find a brighter sky
on the other side
of nothing
only cardboard, concrete, tin roofs
tiny shacks held together by strings of tiny hope
for something better…
green lawns, paved roads
running water and $5.15 an hour
over there, al otro lado
just past the bridge and blood…
just past the gaping wound our sister Anzaldua called it.

I remember 16 years of mountains
and smog disguised as gilded sunsets,


I remember desert winds like cold dead fingers living there…
where las muertas hang over desert graves

Their cries swallowed by dirt
erased by careful watch and careful want
lost under high ranking boots of men,
bought men, scared men, gluttonous men.

Still they come to Juarez the golden city:
City of fortune
City of dollars
City of greed
City of bloodshed
Of caged birds bitten by the devil’s own sons
These leaders in their shiny badges and shiny seats of laws

See our dead children!
Que la sangre corre por las calles

Mother Mary, Virgin, Tonantzin
Help me mother goddess
que la rabia dentro mi piel me come viva
like the animals that feed on the dead of the deserts of Juarez
these men like animals that feed on the dead of the deserts of Juarez
Justicia para las muertas de Juarez
Justice for the women in Juarez


-CA 2004