Borderlands Childhood

Excerpts from Ghazal of a Borderlands Childhood

BY LOGAN PHILLIPS

How Highway 83 scripts the pale grasslands at noon is home
Both driving the twists & arriving to silence & moon is home

Rattle of midnight machine guns across low hills Fort Huachuca
Bedroom window weaponized boyhood sonic booms are home

Windmill decants the aquifer in squeaks and rusted rotations
Threaded water from the faucet thirst weaving loom is home

The twisted cottonwood tree is older that the ghosts of Lochiel
Million green leaves glittering shredded Border Patrol costumes is home

Alison cups a hummingbird inside her slender prayered hands
The iridescent birdheart & the sister touch abloom is home

Standing in the checkout line deciding which language to use
No pos sí qué gusto en verte de verdad cómo estás tú is home

A deathmap a cartography of concertina unspooled across Organ Pipe
Felipe walked north through here towards a Mexica heirloom home

My children running small wordless & human through the purple arroyo sunset
White children singing this land is your land in classroom before I bring them home