Border Patrol Agent Will Not Complete His Shift

^{March 2014}

After the three women turn themselves in, the man drives them
from his river of fasting to a hungering brush-brimmed spot.
On the mother’s wrists, he engraves his ennui, though her pulse
will not submit. Like caravels, mother and daughter break free
from his grip.Through horrid hosanna he tries to split
frontiers with his buckle. Begs the girl to forgive his feet.
In the back of the truck, blood & duct tape. It takes a toll
to corral the nervous hooting, the lamb’s inefficient hands.
A throng of crows splashes on her thin shoulders, on soccer
net poles that struggle to deflect the man’s frantic entrances,
his tenacious fiddle of lust. Rosaries drape on deserts
clotting inexperience. Gunshot after midnight. Maybe asylum.
How will they entomb that absence in his mouth after the verse
of his head has unlatched to fill tulip gardens the length of stars?