JUKE
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JOINT
Another Country, from a Photograph
“I don’t want to see another picture like that on this border,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Chair of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Washington Post, June 2019
I could try to imagine
father and daughter are
playing a secret game,
or that their backs still moved
with shallow breath or
that a laugh came from under
his shirt where he tucked in
his 23-month-old daughter
as she fell into the water
they needed to cross
into Brownsville, Texas. Two
whole months and over 1,000 miles
from El Salvador.
Her small arm crests his neck.
His left shoulder blade fits
perfectly the bend in her waist. The two
prone figures seem nestled, nested,
in the beige water, reeds circular
on the embankment.
On a different riverbank, pods
of innertubes meander by,
pale legs like propellers,
and sunglasses glint.
Two pink and clear rafts
lie abandoned in the bridge underpass.
Window’s Reflection in Rim of a Bowl
Maybe, shard of light, embedded
dagger, opaque tear
in the porcelain,
rhymes with care.
A graft of the outside.
It draws me
outside, this painting of tangerines.
The fox, fur perfectly coiffed
seems taxidermied
lies more than stymied
next to only one blood bead and
entrails clean and arranged
to the side.
These sidewalks have a life of their own.
The sky is so blue today.
McCord has contributed to Juke Joint Mag before. She is a visual artist as well as poet and has published recently in Main Street Rag, Pinyon, and Slippery Elm. She has a new collection coming out in the next month or so from Finishing Line Press! She teaches art and loves pets.