Poetry

Peg Hunter photo

By

Alejandro Escudé

The Wall That Became A Tower

The American wall fabricates itself,

peeling the saliva of ’18 off of its skin;

smug, its brain overloaded by data,

its nerves a river of semiautomatic pistols

clanking against one another, its blood

whistling, loud as a referee’s whistle.

The skies over Washington cloudless,

blue. The train enters its naked head

like a Kennedy bullet. Still, that wall.

It’s not so much a vigorous discussion

as it’s a structure of unkind breaths.

Thousands of refugees, infant deaths.

What is the point of the parable?

Abraham takes a knife to his son’s neck. 

God intercepts him just in time, like 

a Hollywood movie starring ‘The Rock.’

Instead of a wall, why not construct

another Tower of Babel? But not

a tower of languages, of traumas,

each trauma unable to be discussed.

Traumas of violence, traumas of sex.

Let it be vertically tall as the wall

would be horizontally long, let it echo

its stunted climaxes, its bloodless

bloodletting, its tranquil aftershocks.

Alejandro Escudé

Alejandro Escudé’s first book of poems, My Earthbound Eye, was published in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.