Nogales Entry: Elegy for José Antonio Elena Rodríguez

salary (săl′ə-rē)           sal
salt     a salt wage
assault rifles for sale online
“real border patrol rifles used
in action”
wages for sale for real
assault     real sales waged
for salt

a border agent     has agency
n. pl. border agents     as in
boards-of-agents will
border agents
agent              “a person who acts on behalf of”
a person who acts
on behalf of
to be half of

the boy’s       “hands appeared to hold rocks”
appeared               not appear
up here                  are
no rocks                to hold
hold up
hands appear
hands
hold the boy up

* Note: the quoted text is from (in order of appearance) Gunbroker.com, The Oxford English Dictionary, and lastly, testimony of the accused agent.

Paul Hlava Ceballos is the author of banana [ ], winner of the 2021 AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, chosen by Ilya Kaminsky, available from the University of Pittsburgh Press on September 27th, 2022.

His collaborative chapbook, Banana [ ] / we pilot the blood (3rd Thing Press, 2021), shares pages with Quenton Baker, Dr. Christina Sharpe, and Torkwase Dyson.

He has received fellowships from CantoMundo, Artist Trust, and the Poets House. His work has been published in Poetry Magazine, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, and BOMB, among other journals and newspapers, has been translated to the Ukrainian, and nominated for the Pushcart.

He currently lives in Seattle, where he practices echocardiography.