CURRENT EVENTS: BORDER  

The bridge to Matamoros comes up from the mud beneath it.
In Boca Chica you can swim the river
Aiming butterflied shoulders for the same brown and white VW van your mother drove
Over the mountains to get her M.Ed
So that the children who came after
Tommy,
whose felonious parents strapped him to the ramshackle old
wheelchair that comprised his grandmothers’ estate,
could ride the same bus as the neighbors
To the same hot meal and ESL class
You did
Coming up.

I remember the Cherokee teacher who
Taught me to skip a stone over
The river.
Tasting coffee in the cold morning
In that van.
How bitter it was.

And how warm.

Meridith Kohut for The New York Times