I wrote this poem in 2018. I’ve read it a few times in public, including at a poetry event at the Langston Hughes House in Harlem, but this is the first time I’m sharing it online.

“A second man pleaded guilty on Thursday to arranging the transport of dozens of immigrants across Texas last year that ended with 10 of them dead or dying in a sweltering tractor-trailer in a San Antonio parking lot.” —Reuters, March 8, 2018

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedhell is other people
a swelter of two hundred or more
packed like Christmas trees
in this black, rumbling oven

could be a thousand
bodies, degrees
take your pick

jostling molecules
struggle to cohere
in this boiling plasma

we cluster like penitents
at the bullet holes
in the siding
each in turn placing
lips to stigmata
mouthing our paeans
to the great god Oxygen

not prayers for freedom
or new lives
but prayers
for mere survival

for life

meanwhile
the captain’s bony hand
touches shoulder after shoulder
choosing sides
for a team no one
wants to join

Team No One

you
there
on the outside
watching this truck
rock on its springs

don’t you come a-knockin’

don’t you know
you’re in here too

don’t you realize
the phone call is coming
from inside the house

don’t you understand
i’m not afraid to die
i’m only afraid of hell
and we already
live there ∅