Pit River

There is a river as wide as seventy-five bodies, strung together

       face down, unseen.

Its water moves slow and thick like syrup, coughing

       over rocks by the bank where

All the men limp, their women drunk in the trees, fat, fetal children in wheelchairs

        getting too much sun.

We’re all descendants of murder,

       you weren’t there to say. It’s just

That I saw a jet-ski overturn,

       all the while,

Bodies, bobbing. A river as deep

       as almond groves are long.

The distance measured in pink oleander.

Some of our wilderness is as clear as a bad hip.

       Before we brought the nation to eat at our water table,

Before Brazilian citrus

       or Blue Diamond Growers,

Before piece-rate cotton picking,

       before bonanza wheat-fields,

Before gas combines or the transcontinental rush on our

       golden waterways.

A river as scarlet as a barrel,

       measured in fever seasons

Of cholera, someone counted the bodies and saw that none of them were white,

        it’s impossible to tell what came before,

All the while,

       men keep limping; women fall from the branches.