(Ajo, Arizona)
Tom Kiefer showed me his downtown
Ajo studio full of goods confiscated
from migrants by Border Patrol, goods
he’d gained access to while working
as a custodian at the local Border
Patrol station. He photographed the items
in tasteful geometric arrangements
and he showed the photos in museums
throughout the US. The confiscation
policy, he said, struck him as wrong.
But the curatorial text in his exhibition
catalog, expounding on art’s power
to act as a moral light, didn’t have much
of an effect on me. I was impressed
more by the goods he’d accumulated
than by his photos. I was struck most of all
by the thousands of falsa blankets, in a heap,
rising like a mountain over Ajo.
Over its sleepy bungalows, its historic
plaza, and its abandoned copper mine.
Dan Grossman recently taught composition at Marian University in Indianapolis, Indiana and is a former Peace Corps volunteer (Niger 1992-94). He has published often in NUVO, a news publication covering the central Indiana area. He also served as managing editor and arts editor for that publication. He has also published poetry in So it Goes, pLopLop, The Indianapolis Anthology. The Indianapolis Review, Trash Sandwich, ArLiJo, Tucson Sentinel, and many other publications. Currently working on a memoir centered on the US-Mexico border, he edits the online blog IndyCorrespondent.org.