Where the Money Goes

Her arthritic fingers 

smooth the embroidered linens

arrange the ribbons by color, by width

The turistas are slow to come this year

they bargain, as always,

but without spirit

The Mercado will close soon

and Lupita will take her business 
to the street corner

The man who owns the land

is impatient to find better tenants

ones with bigger ideas and

more money to make them real

Her daughter already works

at the maquilladora,

twelve, sometimes fourteen hours a day

plus long, dangerous bus rides

to and from the grey building

that looks north across the river

past the smoke and noise

to the place where the money goes

Some 200 women workers have been murdered near Ciudad Juarez since 1994. See the 2003 documentary, Senorita Extraviada, or the fictionalized version of the story, Bordertown, starring Jennifer Lopez.