Cartwheels Over Invisible Borderlines

From 2020 San Diego Poetry Annual (ISBN 978-1656726018)

Cartwheels Over Invisible Borderlines

Neither tourist nor resident, she dances between borders.
She wears a turquoise and silver mask carved from broken
promises. Tumbling like shells to shore in ever-wider circles,
thousands of refugees follow her. She maps a perpetual
labyrinth between tides, between fences, between highways,
between abandoned shrines and signposts in the vast storm-
wracked desert. Wearing costumes woven from war and
desire, often barefoot, each step marks a moment of faith, each
empty space balances between salt-song and silence. Wavelets
of winter wind will erase her footprints, her child’s handprints,
her infant’s cries.