a history of walls

 
 
our home has a fence the color of dead blood. once my sister launched her barbie into the neighbor’s yard. while in flight the small body stares back knowing it wouldn’t return or at least not the same. the next two days the sky poured out all its water. a plastic girl goes missing & a wet tombstone is born.
 
my hometown rhymes with mexico & ends with a wall. a vertical ladder built all wrong. & lays on its side like a sleeping mother forgetting to feed her legacy. the children don’t know how to wake her. their bellies wail. mouths wide open. their tongues are a sea of small pink hands reaching for the sky.
 
 
 

Karla Cordero is the recipient of the 2015 Loft Literary Center Spoken Word Immersion fellowship (Minneapolis, MN) and editor of SpitJournal, an online literary review for poetry and social justice. Karla's chapbook, Grasshoppers Before Gods (2016) was published by Dancing Girl Press. Her work has appeared in Word Riot, Poetry International, The Acentos Review, Toe Good Poetry, among other publications.