From “Zapotec Crossers (Or, Haiku I Write Post-PTSD Nightmares)” by Alan Pelaez Lopez

V.
Itzel, five, plays dead.
Border patrol agents see
her body—they leave.

Dr. Alan Pelaez Lopez is the author of “The X in Latinx is a Wound, Not a Trend” (ColorBloq 2018) and the chapbook to love and mourn in the age of displacement (Nomadic Press, 2020) among other poems and cultural criticisms. Their poem, “Zapotec Crossers (or, Haiku I Write Post-PTSD Nightmares),” originally appeared in Poetry, Vol. 213, No. 1, p. 40.