Untitled

The oldest thing I remember
Is me runing at the
Kindergarten's playground
With my newly-found friends.

We ran, and the wall was the goal.
"Whoever touches it first, wins!"
I never won;
I just wasn't fast enough.

Here, in the city where I grew up
There are train rails covered
By layers and layers of pavement
And ages and ages of neglect.
"Ya no se usan", said my mom,
Though the rails do pop up sometimes,
When the pavement gets too worn down
And can't keep up with the time
Which still passes by.

When I was 8, I heard of a train
That crosses the country
All the way from the south
Up to the north.
"La Bestia", le dicen.
How many heads does this Beast have?

At an exhibit on
Immigration
I read a tag next to a photograph of
La Bestia,
It said:
"And after Chiapas
Comes the United States?"

I don't remember if the man who said it
Was Guatemalan
Or Honduran
Or Venezuelan,
But it doesn't matter.

I saw a reportage about
My people
Harvesting fruits and vegetables
For $8 a day,
Carrying the buckets
That They wouldn't ever want to touch.

It was movie day in Geography class.
An Arizona-border woman said
She hates us all the same.
Her daughter ODd and died;
And ever since, when mi gente passes by
She picks up the phone
And calls whoever needs to know.

When I was a kindergarten girl
The only wall I ever knew of
Was the wall at the back of the playground
Which I could never reach.
The four walls in my house;
The wall in my room,
Covered with tacky teenager stuff.

Now I know that
There's kindergarten children
Who know much more of walls
That I ever will;
The only beast I ever feared
Was the monster in my closet,
And though they fear The Beast too,
They still pack up their things and go.

I know of a group of women
Who cook and bag food
To feed all of the Beast's heads.
Las Patronas, que les llaman.
La Bestia might even fear them
If it wasn't for the weight
Of the severed limbs and the blood
It drags between its feet.

Today, I write for the children
Who know more of walls and deportation
Than I ever will.
I write for the town in my country
In which little boys dream of crossing
Pa'l otro lado;

For all the Janes and Johns Doe
Who've been waiting at the morgue for
Someone
To go and pick them up;

For the rosaries and prayer books
Ripped out from the hands
Of a person who's already been stigmatized;

For the 5-year old
Calling out for mamá and papá,
For the quechua family
And the nahua girl,

For the Cuban rafters,
Por el Padre Solalinde,
For the hundreds of thousands
Of forgotten IDs
And the empty packets of Sedalmerck;

Por Las Patronas,
Por La Bestia,
Por el Río Bravo,
Por el mojado
Wo has jumped over the wall
Surrounded the wall
Snuck under the wall
Hated on the wall
Spat at the wall
Died by the wall.

For the Salvadoran woman
And her Salvadoran son;
For the Northern Mexican desert,
For the Southern "American" desert.

For the woman whose house is split in two
Because of a technicality
And the Border Wall going across her front yard.

For our territory;
For our people
Who didn't cross the border,
But instead, the border crossed them.

For my neighbour's son
Who didn't get sent home by the ICE,
He only got sent away.

For my Latino family
Por mis mexicanos,
Guatemaltecos, Hondureños,
Salvadoreños, Nicaragüenses,
Venezolanos,
Colombianos,
Bolivianos
Paraguayos
Peruanos
Chilenos;

Por mis mexicanos;
Por mis niños
Y mis niñas.
My boys, my girls,
My women
Our men.

Our blood
Which has been spilled by The Beast
Or a gang
Or the desert
Or the border patrol
Or a soldier
Or an ICE agent

Or a Woman at Wal-Mart
Or a Man at Starbucks.

For the hatred and the prejudice,
And the well-intentioned influencer who says
"This is not who we are,"
Ahora dilo sin llorar.

For the insensitive jacket
And the children kept in cages.
I'd love to see how many of you
Would even think of sending
Your kids to such a "boarding school,"
Because that's what it is, right?

I write for my blood,
Mi sangre,
Mi gente,
My Family, with capital F,
Who knows more of walls
Than I will ever know.