Outside the Mexican Cemetery, a sign
to visitors is crackling and buckled
from solar blistering over generations
and winds sand-blasted off the Chihuahuan Desert:
$200 FINE FOR LOITERING
OR LITTERING HERE.

                     In this place idlers throng;
discarded stones, wood crosses, painted plaster,
and plastic roses faded to pinkish grey
garbage the quiet, death-sustaining slope.

Morales, Marquez, Garcia, Martinez,
Flores, Rivera, Hinojos-Hernandez...

Spiked on a Yucca sprouting from the dirt
of Maria Bartolo Villanueva,
a straw-stuffed rag doll, smiling, rosy-cheeked,
sporting a hat for bean-sack hessian --
the pious tribute of some hijo.

                            Coveys
of Scaled Quail loiter, litter among the ash,
scutter a dusty plot where Moniga
Quinteros de Salgado is reposing,
churr a low nasal Descanse en Paz