Floaters

Floaters takes its title from a term used by some Border Patrol agents for migrants who drown trying to cross into the United States. The title poem responds to a widely shared photograph of Óscar and Valeria, a Salvadoran father and daughter who drowned in the Río Grande, and to claims that the picture was faked. Elsewhere Martín Espada recalls confronting anti-immigrant bigotry in his earlier career as a tenant lawyer, and writes about Central American teenagers held in an internment camp. The collection also includes love poems.