La Mujer Que Llora by: Enrique Chávez Poem by Joseph Edwards

Hola, ¿lo has visto?
¿Has visto a mi hijo?

We were told the story, La Mujer Que Llora.
Stories about the wailing woman.
A howl in the wind, she would cry out.
Where are my children, come with me children.
Where can I take you, come and you'll see.
Once, my own Abuelita heard Llorona's wailing.

Headline, Scareline, Truthline, Extra- Extra, Read All About It.
The government claims to be searching, looking high and low
day and night for these children but officials insist they are hard to track.

And where there is desperation there is La llorona's story.
Abuelita held her children tightly.
All of the stories I had heard as a child were told generation after generation.
She wanders the desert.
A veil of dust between cacti.
Fingers of mist cover bone-dry riverbeds.
Calling for the stolen, the forsaken.

Headline, Scareline, Truthline, Extra- Extra, Read All About It.
The term 'missing, 'suggests a child, someone is desperately trying to find not a child, a loved one, lost to indifference, mismanagement, and red tape.

Children ripped from arms, cries swallowed by the sand.
A mother's scream, a child's name—
buried under tire tracks and silence.
The water does not weep, it devours.
Barbed wire coils like snakes, striking at fleeing feet.

Hola, ¿lo has visto?
This boy, aqui…have you seen him?
¿Has visto a mi hijo?