from “Popular Culture & Cruel Work”

for Chinga La Migra

If a woman illegally crossing
The U.S.-Mexico border can sing
The Border Patrol agent’s favorite
Selena song, will he still detain her?
What if he does & later writes about
Her in the patrol vehicle’s back seat
Singing his favorite Selena song?
Will the Selena fans who read his book
Like it? What if that scene in Reservoir
Dogs where Mr. Blonde tortures a cop had
Been choreographed to "Bidi Bidi
Bom Bom," instead of "Stuck in the Middle
With You?" Would the Border Patrol agent
Be more or less likely to like that scene?

Related Poems

melancholy lake

who never thinks too cold, too coldly of themself
who lay awake (toûtseul) in tha dark room & thot to
     disappear themself.
who would not (not not notnot) be consoled & raged
on pompous ponces, jowlyfacd rich people &
     that melancholic pool, despair

last night I dreamt brad pitt and I were lovers, we
     had each committed a murder and confessed to
     ours in turn—he had killed someone who wouldn’t
     leave w/ him right away to go somewhere, a party
     or something. I—I had killed someone just then,
     as we took a turn around melancholy lake, which
     at first (in the dream) was a salt mine. the salt
     farmer was giving a lecture on the ecology of
     the pool, it was in santa cruz, it was toxic, (we do
     not anymore hear of a clean pool or pond)
     (so that even narcissus is uglified) there were chunks
     of it, salt, floating about at the edges of a pool or
     pond, resembling ice. I could not (cannot) recollect
     the details of my own murder (the one I had
     myself(myself) committedof late). in any case, we walked around the lake
(as I said) on a vertiginous & slippery path of
salt which seemed like ice, and the broken pieces of it floating near, salt rather, gave
a cold and melancholic feeling, and the color of the blue of the pool turned
                        pale green at its center, making it appear warm
                        and tropical. the whole effect was so seductive
                        brad wanted to leap in. I understand, I communicated
                        to him, the desire to leap into the lake of despair but
                        come now old boy do let’s carry on