Diaspora

Afraid is a country with no exit visas 
a wire of ants walking the horizon 
embroiders our passports at birth 
Johannesburg Alabama
a dark girl flees the cattle prods 
skin hanging from her shredded nails 
escapes into my nightmare
half an hour before the Shatila dawn
wakes in the well of a borrowed Volkswagen
or a rickety midnight sleeper out of White River Junction 
Washington bound   again
gulps carbon monoxide in a false-bottomed truck 
fording the Braceras Grande
or an up-country river
grenades held dry in a calabash 
leaving.