Today, when the King calls
the gods tremble;
to receive no welcome
and no shaking of hands
no Heifer’s head on the bloody stake
to appease men – eyes set on our necks.
The children then would learn to grow
around a thousand bodies that smells
neither like their mothers nor their fathers;
around other captives on same leashes as them.
Our painful cries would ricochets and make the earth founder.
Men in black suits and red ties,
with murderous smiles hidden at the corner
of their eyes, would fling their snot at us
across the border forgetting their ancestors once stood
where we stand. They would hold up our children
with one hand, daring us to take a foot across the line.
Our life wires would spark as the currents gulp its last juice –
a bunch of dead bodies belonging neither here nor there.
The men would turn their backs, glasses of wine held up so high.
Now when our children were all grown
carrying our faces but their own stases
would they even remember? The men:
would they not try to remove every remembering from them
making them to neither belong here nor there?
And if we could take a peep from beyond the horizon
the ache in our hearts would form a noose
around the fate of this land;
our children would spend a lifetime
understanding the way of the King and not of the gods.
• Author’s Note: This poem is in response to John Kelly, US Secretary of DHS, asserting that he will consider separating immigrant children from their parents at the Mexico-US border and placing them in foster care. Basically using children’s pain and suffering as a deterrent to future immigrants
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