Las Manos

Las Manos
(The Border between Nicaragua and Honduras, 1989)

When the police pull you out of your car,
just keep your head down, like
you don’t know that
Che Guevara fought in Africa
and Martin Luther King Jr said,
“I have a dream.”

When the police pull your seats out of your car,
just turn your eyes away
and look at everyone watching
you, who once lit a fire in a
trash can, threw a bottle bomb,
screamed to the TV cameras that

no one should be able to knife your car’s seats
while you sit on a blue plastic chair
under a sign that reads “ADUANAS,”
The Communist Manifesto in your
back pocket cutting into your butt,
passport in hand stamped “Persona Non Grata.”

When the man tearing out your door panels shouts,
look back across the border and see
pine trees stretching across the hills.
They shade little red beans on the plantations,
where caretakers live in adobe houses.
Their children’s bellies swell with the rot of worms.