Border Crossings
By David Wojahn
Bottles on the closet floor,
bottles underneath the bed.
Of course he thinks he’s caused
it all. The hiding places
unimaginative, the vodka’s
glass sides clear when empty,
clear when full, like the cellophane
-transparent plastic skin
of the model he glued together
thirty years ago, The Visible
Man, the tiny organs in
“authentic colors,” kelly green lungs
and scarlet heart. But he’s trying,
as they say, to reside in the moment,
stuffing the duffel bag
to bring her where she’s trembling
on the ward, where she’s hating both
herself and him, passing four
locked doors to reach her, as if each
were some frontier checkpoint
to a country even farther
distant than the one he’s trapped
in now. The zebra-striped gate,
the guards who hold his documents
against the light, peering through
the watermarks and faded passport stamps.
And he knows his skin is glass,
his mission shame, and shame
the lingua franca of these lands,
the sign language of fingers
unzipping compartments
with a nylon hiss, to probe
her sweaters, jeans, and stockings,
(the toothpaste tube uncapped
and sniffed) and shame the notebook
and the novels he’s brought her,
riffled and shut with a strange
and final delicacy, and shame
the signal that motions him on.
Copyright Credit: David Wojahn, “Border Crossings” from The Falling Hour. Copyright © 1997. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.
Source: The Falling Hour (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997)