Rosie Lopolito
BA Candidate, English, WUSTL
Hazel “Rosie” Lopolito is a freshman intending to major in English at Washington University in St. Louis. She grew up in St. Louis County, and since high school, she’s been increasingly active regarding immigration in America and other humanitarian issues. Her writing has previously appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Webster-Kirkwood Times. To her, Hostile Terrain 94 is equal parts memorial and call to action.
Manila and Orange
White plastic chair in a white tent. Hunched. Back curved, A hard beetle in the desert. Leg bouncing, once, twice. Anxious movements, but safe (Safe and shielded from the sun). Black pen chiseling stiff words On manila and orange tags. No sweating in the sunshine, No sighing in the shade: Writing—nothing but scratchmarks, Mechanical and sterile. Not waxing Stygian poetic, Not documenting excursions to Eden and back Like an intrepid explorer, Not writing love letters with splotchy ink. (Although, in a way, it was just that, But without any impassioned blemishes, Without stains. None on the paper, that is.) And yet, The thin numbers pressed into Each tiny box contained as much affection as Frida’s letters to Diego, Vincent’s to Theo, Steinbeck’s to his son.Sliced open, the tag was cut By the sharp tip of my pen and began to bleed. (Since when was I a surgeon? How could I be qualified to Bring anyone back to life, Especially when they’ve been reduced to this? To a tiny tag populated by squiggles? To thick paper and crammed boxes and bloody ink? To piles of tags, displayed in a cluster and so become Indistinguishable, like soldiers who Never volunteered for such an unfair war.) The wet curve of each letter, Shining with dark ichor, Stood out against sand-colored cardstock For just a moment before drying. Drying dark, dead and lusterless. Manilla for José, for Dante, for Natali, Orange for Jane and John and Doe. The oldest was forty, The youngest half that. Younger, even. Younger, still.
“Fully fleshed.”
Fleshed, decomposed, skeletal.
Mummified.
Bones degraded and bones scattered,
Articulatous, ligamented—
What does it all mean anymore?
Sometimes unclear, undetermined, unknown.
And so many numbers.
Dates, IDs, coordinates.
How can you have no name
But be reduced to a five-, six-, seven-,
However-digit long number?
Undetermined, unknown—how?
How can we know so little,
Only the smallest slivers
Of who they were?
They were (they are) people
(Who had favorite ice cream flavors,
Who liked to dance or didn’t know how,
Who had chapped lips or painted nails,
Who squinted at the sun on bright days,
Who sighed at the stars and smiled at the moon
And dreamed of places beyond their country,
Beyond this beautiful wretched world),
Not nameless flesh or tarnished bones or barren husks of
Who they used to be.
They have names and faces and stories
(Like you, like me).
But that’s all been scattered,
Flecks of ash in the desert wind.
Flecks of ink on a toe tag.
It’s an insult.
I thought we loved,
Revered our dead:
President after president,
One figure after another.
Is this our America?
(I wish I was surprised.)
Memorialized by the public, many
Live on after their bodies are buried,
But so many others are forced to die a second death,
Becoming ghost citizens of a hostile world:
Those who expired from exposure,
Soft bodies freezing in the desert,
Wasteland turned cemetery.
Or the ones who faced the opposite:
Blistering, burning, broiling
Under the Arizona sun.
And the victims of wounds to here, here, and there
Or those whose remains were too mangled,
Too damaged, or too incomplete to identify
How they ended up that way.
Bones can’t speak, but my god, do they scream.
It’s too loud to shut out, isn’t it?
The Sonoran calls, cries,
Wondering when the weight will be gone.
Who will tell her?
No—she knows already.
She’s heard this dirge before.
The sand sings and the wind
Wails the funeral hymns.
But this isn’t her job,
The Sonoran wasn’t meant to house the dead.
Desert stones form no cairn, dry soil no casket.
No urn, no grave offers a secure embrace,
The bodies cannot rise once again
To fall into the gentle arms
Of a lover, a parent, a child, a friend.
Lizards don’t give proper funerals,
Vultures, poor mourners.
The sludge of the earth provides
No solace, no warmth, no love.
(She can give so much but not enough.)
Neither can I, or you—
A fruitless task, but what else is there?
Is there ever an end to this kind of grieving?
(An extinguished life leaves
Long smoke trails,
Depositing clumps of soot in their wake.)
How do we share our warmth,
Our hearts, heavy with life,
(Still beating. Still beating.)
With those who can no longer feel it?
Even writing now,
I can’t (is it impossible?) capture
The Who: describing the What is the closest
I can get to this untouchable, unspeakable—
Looking at that wall of tags tears out your tongue
But a breath over 3,200 pins dare you to speak.
The wall bulges in a frozen gasp,
An inhale that won’t be released.
It swells like a wound full of bile
With the pressure growing, growing,
No release, no movement, no words.
What can you say in the face of such a beast?
Is this gulf too wide, is the schism too deep,
The water too capricious to cross?
I hope it’s not.
I hope it’s not.
Who are we if this is it?
Who are we if we allow this to be it?