95 Immigration poems

The woman in the documentary reaches her hands to the fence      touches her child through an opening De mis manos      dolor     When I was a child      my mama drove me to the swap meet on the other side for a white dress & flowered wreath      my first Holy Communion      the mamas nursing on the roadside     selling chicle con sus manos libres      Abuelo once rode in the casket of a trunk      He rose again on our side of the border which crossed Bisabuela’s family      Look from my balcony      the sleeping sister volcanoes shaped like breasts     I’ve thought about leaving      Shoving a duffel bag & laptop into the car     taking the dog      But these babies I’ve wanted since I was a child      That’s what girls do where I grew up down the road from a landfill in the humid stench of a beef plant & sugar beets     hulled & boiled for their sweet white meat      I found an animal in a trap who’d fought her way through high grasses wasting to carcass in my own backyard & I believe you know what a merciful act means I don’t know the words for the shame I’ve carried The woman in the documentary needs papers to get back to her children     They’d found her in the hospital      without insurance      la migra Mama nursed women who’d run through asparagus fields’ crackling heat      bellies full against the barbed wire they’re still burying like umbilicals      roots on a battlefield if the child’s a boy or the place where tortillas are made for a girl      Don’t you dare say desert The heat is unbearable & I’ve seen them pulling anchors from legs cursing bullet shells      In the hospital facing pig barns & a graveyard      Mama in her scrubs & gloves pulling newborns      bloodied like suicide wrists      Jars of coins for the ferryman & La Virgen burning an altar on my nightstand      Mis manos      Mis hijos Whatever fence I’ve erected from that salted curse in my family’s blood Release us The woman on the screen whispers a prayer Fly us free as birds Sin vergüenza I admit the darkness I’ve swallowed      the hollow inside      Now      who will unpin our hands      & toward sky      upraise them

Alexandria, 1956 The rugs had been rolled up and islands of them Floated in the centers of every room, And now, on the bare wood floors, My sister and I were skimming among them In the boats we’d made from newspaper, Sheets of them pinned to each other, Dhows, gondolas, clippers, arks. There was a mule outside on the street Braying under a load of figs, though mostly There was quiet, a wind from the desert Was putting the city to sleep, But we were too far adrift, the air Was scurfy and wet, the currents tricking Our bows against reef and coral And hulls shearing under the weight of cargo. “Ahoy and belay!” I called to my sister, “Avast, avast!” she yelled back from her rigging, And neither of us knew what we were saying But the words came to us as from a movie, Cinemascopic, American. “Richard Widmark,” I said. “Clark Gable, Bogie,” she said, “Yo-ho-ho.” We had passed Cyprus And now there was Crete or Sardinia Maybe something larger further off. The horizon was everywhere I turned, The waters were becoming turgid, They were roiling, weeks had passed. “America, America, land-ho!” I yelled directionless. “Gibraltar,” my sister said, “Heave to,” And signalling a right, her arm straight out, She turned and bravely set our course North-by-northwest for the New World. Did we arrive? Years later, yes. By plane, suddenly. With suitcases And something as hazy as a future. The November sun was pale and far off, The air was colder than we’d ever felt, And already these were wonders to us As much as snow would be or evergreens, And it would take me a long time Before I’d ever remember Boats made of paper, islands of wool, And my sister’s voice, as in a fog, Calling out the hazards, Leading me on, getting us there.

For Chino In the middle of that desert that didn’t look like sand and sand only, in the middle of those acacias, whiptails, and coyotes, someone yelled “¡La Migra!” and everyone ran. In that dried creek where 40 of us slept, we turned to each other and you flew from my side in the dirt. Black-throated sparrows and dawn hitting the tops of mesquites, beautifully. Against the herd of legs, you sprinted back toward me, I jumped on your shoulders, and we ran from the white trucks. It was then the gun ready to press its index. I said, “freeze, Chino, ¡pará por favor!” So I wouldn’t touch their legs that kicked you, you pushed me under your chest, and I’ve never thanked you. Beautiful Chino— the only name I know to call you by — farewell your tattooed chest: the M, the S, the 13. Farewell the phone number you gave me when you went east to Virginia, and I went west to San Francisco. You called twice a month, then your cousin said the gang you ran from in San Salvador found you in Alexandria. Farewell your brown arms that shielded me then, that shield me now, from La Migra.

The name of his native country pronounced on a distant shore could not please the ears of a traveller more than hearing the words “nitrogen,” “oxidation of iron” and “hygrometer.” —Alexander von Humboldt, nineteenth-century scientist-explorer When visiting a distant (and imponderable) shire, one longs to hear the cry “Hygrometer! Fresh hygrometer for sale!” Yes, and when the fair sex sidles close and coyly murmurs “nitrogen” into a burly masculine ear, I guarantee you: the translation is very easy. The allurements of a local siren, whispering the kind of patois a traveler like Lord Byron favors, never fail to comfort, and to reassure, evoking pleasant memories of one’s own beloved hygrometer at home, kept fresh in Cosmoline and camphor and awaiting one’s rearrival back in his native xenon and nitrogen. Without these occasional reminiscences, any translation from nation to nation, tongue to tongue, becomes a translation difficult to sustain. I think of my grandmother: “We're not hirin’ today” “Go away” “Dumb Jew”— her share of the language that greeted her here in the land of alien hygrometer and freedom, where she was only one more funny-skirted for- eigner yearning to hear a lulling Hungarian nitrogen hum her to sleep. Eventually, of course, the American nitrogen sufficed. Her daughter could speak, in free translation, both uranium and argon; and her granddaughter gigs with Fire ’n Ice, a skinhead punk-grunge group that performs in sheer black nighties and clown wigs—she plays mean electric hygrometer in the first set and then, for a twofer, ( very American, that) plays paper-and-comb. Far out. She’s so fluent in various World Wide Webbery that nitrogen in a thousand different inflections is her birthright, and almost any translation, mind to mind, gender to gender, is second nature. “I earn my keep, I party, I sleep” is her motto. Though she’s for- tunate in having a lover who’s CEO at Hygrometer, Potassium, Klein & Wong: it helps to pay the “hygrometer man” when he knocks at the door. I won’t say that they fear this guy exactly, but he’s a major badass nitrogen- sucking cyberwired ninja-kicking shitheel (or, translation: call him Sir). It makes one pine for a land where the birds all choir in sweetly trilling melodies on a flower-scented shore, and a translation sings all night. Row gen- tly toward it. The tender forests sigh, and the soft whirr of the hygrometer promises oxidation of iron.

When I boarded the plane, everyone looked like Uncle Tom ruddy, some were empurpled gray hair or auburn in terrier thatches pale blue of eye a smidgen of resignation: the tribe. I thought We are driving to the interior I thought holy god the airline upholstery was Yeats, Kavanagh and Heaney handwriting. I thought holy shit, this is the maw. The maw.

Miles of them grow in my carry-on and travel with me across continents but the customs officers are suspicious they eye my old suitcase and ask me to open it Pickles? they ask sniffing deeply prodding a packet or two say Sure ma’am you’ve got no jeera or chilies? (now they’ve learned the Hindi word for cumin so the new trick is to joke with us) And one time I saw three burly officers question an elderly couple disheveled as I was from 20-plus hours of travel from Kolkata and as disoriented (and yes as usual all the usual “foreign” suspects are sent along to “Agriculture”) and they poked around in their overstuffed bags (where some rice fields appeared but they couldn’t see them of course) and one officer said Duck? Bombay Duck? It’s a fish?? Dried fish your son wanted? Sorry no fish allowed or birds

With el río grande~bravo in our face This river at its mouth at its source With you at its source its sources With you at the snow the evergreens The million earth holes of water emerging emerald Snakes, Gloria Anzaldúa's grave With this river on our face Neon green anole swells its throat pink-white El río bravo~ grande on its face Ocelots hunt under six foot shrub canopies With the drive of the Continental Divide with the pull of tributaries in their limbs Chicharras whining in the shade rivers in their timbals Females laying eggs in branches The young border patrol officer flashes sirens daily lifts his gun with the river on his face Upriver, Chihuahua desert ancestors' adobe bricks stand up crumble down With el río grande~bravo on our face You said you loved the river on my face You said headwaters the source el río grande rises from its source saw the lines around our mouths saw adobe-brick lines exposed Monsoon season granizo pelting the facades at its source in my mouth adobe mud bricks in my mouth the earth holes, the sources the snow avalanches granizo Río Conchos de México grandmothers' Cueva de la Olla at our face Tarahumara Rarámuri Tidal confluences in our face Some crossed with nuns during la revolución el río bravo~grande on their face Relatives disappear die detained with tributaries of many rivers on their face In Ciudad Juárez, a mother hoped her missing daughter married a rich American with the river far away Constant helicopters finding heat with the river as the source To the west, crossers lift the tortilla curtain Walk deserts without water on their face Guanajuato ancestors crossed through Cali with mirages in their face While I shower daily with el valle river water on my face Thank you and kiss you daily Julia de Burgos with el Río Grande de Loíza Puerto Rico in your face Julia I can now speak of hurricanes and being a dog at someone's feet I remember El Paso's Inca doves burrowing owls in the morning barn owls in El Valle's cemeteries great horned owl and mockingbirds Harris hawks and pauraques vecinos carrying signs two communities "¡No al muro!" "¡Segundo Barrio no se vende!" with the river on their face A daughter and mother want their ashes scattered at Boca Chica the river's mouth the end, the start another source crabs collapsing into bullets bursting out of holes carrizo, bugambilia seeds      petals      paper rose raspas the mouth the eddies the tributaries the flow Río Conchos de México the snow granizo the pelts the sources rising The confluence of people and god tortugas ribbon snakes in Roma pigs and piglets jumping from banks with the river on their face You can hear roosters crowing across the water in Miguel Alemán Hurricanes disturb unsettled graves with the river in our face You said you don't want archaic chains lowering you loudly with obvious labor six feet in You want to hear the cool chachalacas with the river on their legs flapping from ébano to ébano el chalán the ropes the pull over green water under blue sky to Díaz Ordaz I want to hear parrots sabal palms try again With the river on our face I want no medicine no ambition with the river in my face I used to love you with the river in my face I stil love you when the river's on my face I made a foot-deep grave with the river on my face I loved other rivers with el río grande~bravo on my face I want to oxbox lake in this place where children stil speak and lose multiple tongues in this place where we still lose and grow forked tongues this place where white herons hunt and drink in the resacas this place with el río grande~bravo in its pipes in its lungs in our face

No need to drive a nail into the wall To hang your hat on; When you come in, just drop it on the chair No guest has sat on. Don’t worry about watering the flowers— In fact, don’t plant them. You will have gone back home before they bloom, And who will want them? If mastering the language is too hard, Only be patient; The telegram imploring your return Won’t need translation. Remember, when the ceiling sheds itself In flakes of plaster, The wall that keeps you out is crumbling too, As fast or faster. Translated from the German by Adam Kirsch

A river killed a man I loved, And I love that river still —María Meléndez 1. Thousands of fish killed after Pemex spill in el Río Salado and everyone runs out to buy more bottled water. Here, our river kills more crossers than the sun, than the singular heat of Arizona, than the ranchlands near the Falfurrias checkpoint. It's hard to imagine an endangered river with that much water, especially in summer and with the Falcon Reservoir in drought, though it only takes inches to drown. Sometimes, further west, there's too little river to paddle in Boquillas Canyon where there are no steel-column walls except the limestone canyon's drop and where a puma might push-wade across, or in El Paso, where double-fenced muros sparkle and blind with bullfight ring lights, the ring the concrete river mold, and above a Juárez mountain urges La Biblia es La Verdad—Leela. 2. Today at the vigil, the native singer said we are all connected by water, la sangre de vida. Today, our vigil signs proclaimed McAllen is not Murrieta. #iamborderless. Derechos Inmigrantes=Derechos Humanos. Bienvenidos niños. We stand with refugee children. We are all human. Bienvenidos a los Estados Unidos. And the songs we sang the copal that burned and the rose petals spread en los cuatro puntos were for the children and women and men. Songs for the Guatemalan boy with an Elvis belt buckle and Angry Birds jeans with zippers on back pockets who was found shirtless in La Joya, one mile from the river. The worn jeans that helped identify his body in the news more times than a photo of him while alive. (I never knew why the birds are angry. My mother said someone stole their eggs.) The Tejas sun took a boy I do not know, a young man who wanted to reach Chicago, his brother's number etched in his belt, his mother's pleas not to leave in white rosary beads he carried. The sun in Tejas stopped a boy the river held. Detention centers filled, churches offer showers and fresh clothes. Water and a covered porch may have waited at a stranger's house or in a patrol truck had his body not collapsed. Half of our bodies are made of water, and we can't sponge rivers through skin and release them again like rain clouds. Today at the vigil the native singer sang we are all connected by water, la sangre de vida.

After being humiliated one continues the manuscript of identity. Activities, diseases, doldrums, the crony affair after the situation, the one where one faces how one is the undertaste, how one isn't the neighbor, the piebaker, a white folk. How one isn't a gorgeous dream wrapped up in tireless affection, primped for wider screens. So there one grew, in the coffee sickness, the dictionary browsing in a fury for the word entitlement to spill— After convulsing with rage, one continues in the aftermath of no friends on Tuesdays or shouting fiercely when nothing sobered to the eleventh hour and the tide shrunk to its sense of privacy where it had nothing to do with shores or moons, and humiliation sat on its lover's knee, greeting the eccentric rich and the hourglass with such force the rage enameled like fine paint to a sheen of deep blue. Restless in the way that stirs the crowd to its feet to claim the encounter for the intentions of personal gain without the empire, without the embarrassment of shaking one's head, of resting it underneath the ground, to live sanctioned in the migrancy with an ugly plate for the economy but working ever so hard. So unplanned, so beyond what one did before the lack of dignity sang an opera. And organized all the ideas, before rage shot a bird that had once watched effortlessly all the comings and goings.