How much does it cost to bury a fucking Mexican?

poem

How much does it cost to bury a fucking Mexican?

How much does it cost 
to bury a fucking Mexican?

It’s an interesting question, 
one asked over the centuries 

and which has many answers,
depending on who you ask

if you dig deep enough
into the blood-stained earth 

on the border
where there are mass graves

filled with the bodies 
of countless women and children

you might ask the dead
how much it cost

to bury them there
along the devil’s highway

*

Or perhaps we could ask
the scores of people

who die working the fields
in the brutal heat, every day

on modern day plantations
picking the produce 

that makes its way 
to Amerikkkan stomachs 

the fruits of our labor
run the economy yet

we aren’t fit to be properly buried
or even considered human

because no one has ever cared 
how much it costs 

to bury a fucking Mexican
except to make a headline

*

The context regarding the burial
of Vanessa Guillén is lost

on a population who no more 
values the life of a Mexican

than it does the Birth of a Nation 
on stolen land

this country has never considered 
‘Mexicans’ to be human beings

but instead as disposable labor 
and fodder for political campaigns

It matters less whether the words 
were actually spoken out loud and

more that no matter how much 
status, wealth or fame we achieve 

we’re all still just a bunch of
goddamn Mexicans

• S/C