Today’s New Verse News: WHAT WE WANT TO HEAR
by Suzette Bishop
A former Border Patrol agent who confessed to killing four sex workers in 2018 was convicted Wednesday of capital murder, after jurors heard recordings of him telling investigators he was trying to "clean up the streets" of his South Texas hometown. —NPR, December 7, 2022
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God loves you, she tells him When he says he wants to kill himself, And he shoots her Along I-35, The road I’ve taken Countless times out of Laredo. The woman who escapes his truck And Border Patrol-issued gun Leaves him grasping her shirt At the gas station Around the corner from me. He lives in a nearby subdivision In the newer, shinier part of town Built on ranch land belonging to a Mexican family When this was Mexico, In litigation for years, sold for almost nothing. She coaxes him to take her to get cigarettes When the realization he’s the one who killed the others Pricks her like cactus. San Bernardo where he picked up Prostitutes is further south Off I-35. You’ll find rundown motels, Mid-century nostalgia, A few restaurants Including at least one that served both food And, unbeknownst to us, women, Another where the waiter Would wait until my husband went to the restroom To meet my eyes, Nod knowingly, even walked over once To tell me I’m pretty, Running after us one evening in the parking lot With some special smoothie He made just for me. He was gone the next time we went there. Spilling out of Olive Garden At the mall across the highway After a work luncheon, A woman begged us for money. I gave her my styrofoam of leftovers, But I knew it wasn’t enough, No shade offered from the palm trees Cordoning off our oasis from Heroin alley, This road, Bait, This moment of telling her, You could be my wife, now, Live in this house she left, Following the underpasses And drainage ditches. Flooring it To a nicer road built on stolen desert. When the woman escapes, He drives home, arms the place, Guns and ammo laid out on the kitchen island’s granite And speeds out onto the highway again, The section where you can hear teens Drag race. He catches two more victims Before he’s caught, Throwing their bodies like trash Along the highway. He said it was to clean up the streets. A student wrote about one victim, a relative, Addicted, her children were raised by her mother, Rehab hadn’t worked, But they still loved her, Told the children she loved them And would get better, Couldn’t believe how she’d died, Left alone in buzzing scrub brush. On Sundays, teenagers show off their muscle cars Along San Bernardo, Police having to direct traffic, Kids calling to each other out the windows, Sometimes saying everything we want to hear, Probably some of these women, once.
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Suzette Bishop has published three poetry books and two chapbooks, including her most recent chapbook, Jaguar’s Book of the Dead. Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies. She lives with her husband and two cats.