These Crossers Are Not Spirits Yet
they’ve only entered their name and uploaded an avatar
and none of us are in the books because no one wrote our name
in the book of heavenly crossers we’re stuck
working the 24-hour-a-day bilingual hotline
where buses full of poultry workers are calling
they can’t tell the difference between the ghost fence
and the real one yet they still feel
the invisible tug across their waist as they pass
through the line we tell them the news can’t trust us
once we hang up
the voice on the other side becomes what
the fence industry calls a recycled crosser
who leaves their fake parents for more fake parents
that’s what another crosser told me their necks in pain
from turning to their desire
an arrow that can only point right
in desert training bureaus we sipped from the hands of patrol
their hands tasted like copper and in the office of detainment
we met five migrants but they weren’t in the office their future was
being decided in a room practised in screams, er, sorry, screens
and just as the room is rehearsed the crossers are practised in years
of calling back the person that sent them here if they can find their number
but they’re so numb from pressing num lock over and over you can’t ff the border
you can only rewind it and every year flashes
before us as we try and put the film back into the cartridge
you have a face only a fence could love
but today our call logs are not detecting your usual self
no casandra to gel your hair or open the door in the wall
there was nothing else to open so we opened the recording of your voice
it told us that your body keeps trailing your body
and as you claw at the map the map
claws back with its rigid borders
on the trail of a robocal king
everyday for one year Primitivo left me his ID taped to the border fence and I would use the ID
to ask for sanctuary on behalf of my Primitivo but ahead of me in line
were the cities of Juarez and Nogales the cities are asking for sanctuary
but there’s no one to ask
the cities want it both ways
they want to plug your border and cross it at the same time
fighting for the border they can’t see
they know it’s there they just can’t see it
on the train to El Paso a crosser told me that a fence begins and ends with words
and which ones did they chose for us?
who’s that behind the camera? wait, the person in front of the camera
is also the person behind it?
well then, we = slick and you = slip
you see,
you’re my guest and you’re also my guest worker
I can page you once but I can’t page you twice, Primitivo
they’re waiting for your voice to appear in the kiosk
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
You’ve decided to give chase to yourself through the citydesert and the wind breaks through your teeth and you taste you, the sand of crossing theatre, where faces face themselves in personal surrender. You hear patrol but never see patrol and it’s also hard to see yourself.
Some people are shocked when the simulation evokes real life things. Normal things like, you forgot about the tea kettle and the water’s now evaporated. Or, getting dressed for the morning trek, putting on your wranglers, though you’re the one who will be wrangled. What was the question they asked you at the border checkpoint? Q: Who was your high school mascot? A: The Riverside Crossers! They cam here for sculpting work (a sculpture of themselves in the holding cell) or a narrative painting that succeeds its own narrative, all caught on cam. But this clip is without stories logic it’s a simulation of all your time in the border. Streaming through portals labeled with names of border towns:
When are you past versions of yourself? When are you future versions of yourself, Primitivo? To know, you mount headsets in walnut paneled offices. In this simulation you’re customs attending to barriers. If you find huecos in walls, fill them and if you find severed links in fences, solder those too. Near the wall, replica amigos ask, “Which ruins are you working on?” but ruins are the past, this repair occurs now, in the border and your thoughts. You can see through the mesh and it allows a hope of escape from identity, but it’s a small square. Embedded in a contract of desert,
Tijuana/Chula Vista:
you’ve never gone this far in simulation. You fashion a bag that says “Feliz Navidad Y’all.” On this side you’re in vogue, a santx of your people and not your people in San Antonio. You carry nimble hands, a rural ethic. You’re what the architects of the simulation call a trail curving out from duos of drummer and fife. But you sense when you’re too close to these simulated crossers. They also sniffed a recall, attempted to flee. Coming together, then dividing, this winter-crossing emulator is a game of repetition, you’ll see. In the desert you’re reminded there’s seasons. Access to water gets glitchy this far north and when you hear a chip-tune, you’re close to being caught. Here, you can portal-through
Laredo/Nuevo Laredo:
the town of Portal, AZ. You have to find a corridor and you know it’s safe by the sound of corridos (This again? Yes the polka has never left, you tried to alt + delete it unsuccessfully) The polca you grew up singing helps you interpret signs that read “sentido se para en el desierto,” meaning stops in the desert, but you keep crossing
Nogales/Nogales:
to access the speed-ball of culture, approaching new depths of rural and city. You hide close to the patrol to also know where water is. These sessions are a racket of crossing, an internal seek and wait for the mounted spotlights last soak before you call it
Calexico-Mejicali:
a simulation. In this one, you’re receiving the line of crossers who don’t want to be converted into files that can be attached or sent. Their hope is an unknown address. One where it’s difficult to have ICE slip you the tongue. They want to go back to the analog border, when it was easier to cross. You dream of eating the dehydrated melons of Matamoros but your mind does what the border says, training in mud plastered cabins to collect names by mouth or nod. Beyond the experience of words, shipments of ICE arrive
Andrade/Los Algodones:
and never melt. In this version, you’re mortals karaokeing ? and the Mysterians, “96 Tears” flowing from your voice. You were trying to naturalize yourself. Did customs see? But there’s nothing natural about the process of being processed. You also carry a flask tagged with the phrase godbless?, the prayer also a question: Are you only identified
San Luis/San Luis Rio Colorado:
when you cross? Take a self, leave a self, to prove yourself. Pics and it happened. You knew you wouldn’t stay long in the simulation because like a glow stick, days after the rave,
El Paso/Juarez:
you fade. There are stains in the shape of crossers on the wall, their shadows have frozen, as their bodies continue over.
% % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % %
I want to leave this party, hosted by customs boss. The coleslaw was dripping with mustard, ew. There’re even ewes, a sort of petting zoo type of party but who pets who? There’s also a diluted watercolor/passport station. These passaportes have to be diluted by watercolors. It’s easier to see the crossers avatar when they’re diluted, instead of a concentrated form. There’s also two simulation chairs, like the ones they have inside the mall. This simulation is called Blue Heinie. Walk around us and look at our butts, they are blue. I don’t have any control or button or strategy in this one, I’m just watching butts. I’m one of those customs that believes in the no strategy strategy. I tried all the simulations at the party (Casa de Terror, Blue Heinie and NAFTA After Party) and heaven knows I’m commiserable now. This looks like a site that looks like a real site. In Nafta After Party you have to translate W-2’s and log on to emails for crossers and I thought “Loco, even data migrates now.” At the checkpoint customs aks you “Are you the primary or the replica? We screen those that trespass against us and all y’all are trespassing.” Then you wait in a tomb for three days and on the 3rd day you’re released from the tomb, the one with a sliding circular stone door. You’re so much like J. Cristo it’s not even.
Customs resurrected you because they need more of you to make the border exist. They used to try and deter crossers by making them believe they had already crossed. You are already here they’d say. They’d show you a video of you crossing. It looked so much like you it must have been you. But now they need you to cross and you have passed to the afterafterlife and risen again and have crossed the desert and you guess you’re in simulation now, unable to dissimulate only creating dollar signs and your buddies can only say four words: work mylar blank x. The x is important because it can mean no, it can mean here, it can mean meet me, it can mean peligro, it can mean the spot, it can mean intercourse, it can mean interzone, it can mean simulation, it can mean reality, it can stand in for the crosser, it can stand in for what doesn’t cross, it can stand in for your tongue swapping saliva with another tongue, it can mean meet me at the gate, it can mean meet me at the gate and give me the bedazzled jeans, it can mean whisper to me how to get into simulation, it can mean you are not there but your double is, it can mean you are not there and you never were.
•••
Gabriel Dozal is from El Paso, Texas. He received his MFA in poetry from the University of Arizona. His work appears in Guernica, The Iowa Review, and The Brooklyn Rail. These poems are from his Border Simulator series.