Afraid is a country with no exit visas a wire of ants walking the horizon embroiders our passports at birth Johannesburg Alabama a dark girl flees the cattle prods skin hanging from her shredded nails escapes into my nightmare half an hour before the Shatila dawn wakes in the well of a borrowed Volkswagen or a rickety midnight sleeper out of White River Junction Washington bound again gulps carbon monoxide in a false-bottomed truck fording the Braceras Grande or an up-country river grenades held dry in a calabash leaving.
