Detention Camp Terzanelle

Looks like doggie daycare: rows of steel pens
inside a Walmart under fluorescent lights.
Lucky you. The later-come will have to live in tents.

Inside the Walmart they never turn off the lights
so you try to sleep with a T-shirt over your head
and anyway, you can’t tell the daytime from the night.

Try to sleep with a T-shirt pulled over your head.
The little girls need help, but you’re just thirteen
and don’t know if your parents are alive or dead.

The little girls need help. You’re just thirteen.
You change their diapers. Tell them to pray for hope.
Mama will come, I promise. Sleep now and dream.

You change their diapers and you pray for hope
remembering the last time you saw your mother.
You dream of her standing in the shadow of a rope.

Remember the last time you saw your mother
on her knees in the water, surrounded by agents,
begging them not to take your baby brother.
Remember the world outside this chain-link fence?

Available! High-Voltage Lines, Knocking from Inside