Desert Borders

by Frank Modica

Metal flowers 30 feet tall 
bloom in the Sonoran desert.
Sharp petals and branches,
a deep patina of rust 
claw the sky.

And at night stadium lighting
like the Berlin Wall,
like the Iron Curtain
shine in the darkness, 
to protect our border crossings,
to preserve our graves, our mausoleums
while ripping through 
ancient burial grounds.

Bulldozers scape 
the landscape bare,   
to prepare the ground 
for this new monument.
Saguaro cacti lie in heaps,
stacked like corpses.