Pentecost

Adelanto Detention Center Hunger Strike

We drove the Cajon Pass rose-blue valley
toward the Mojave Desert’s wind farms.
A topography without mercy.
Emptiness, jackrabbits, a prison.

Inside are Salvadoran mothers, Cameroon
women who crossed rivers, jungles, checkpoints.
They sit before us in colored jumpsuits.
We are there because we, too, are useless,

old women, invisible. We listen until
the guard watching signals, until we
carry home stories dark as the last light
on wine-bruised San Gabriel mountains.

We phone lawyers with 90,000 cases.
Plead. Pay bonds for the rare miracle of release.
Sit in court, helpless. Witness their timidity,
watch bailiffs take them away weeping. Lambs.

When the virus blew its mortal breath
into their cinder block space, extremity
entered with its thud of terror and sympathy.
Now they are at the mercy of the merciless.

Call it solidarity or ingenuity or compassion.
Across languages they pantomime.
Someone, call her Maria Luisa, says,
If I am to die, let it be in refusal.

With gestures she signals no eat.
Reprisals will follow as certain as hunger.
Some will cave, but not all. Not all.
All witness a spirit they didn’t expect, recognize.

This article appears in May 2021.