by Roberto Christiano
"I am out with lanters (sic) looking for myself."
I am awake. I am a foreigner. Illegal. I am my
parents. I know that I am not illegal. I feel that I
am. I am scared.
parents. I know that I am not illegal. I feel that I
am. I am scared.
My father was illegal. If you were stuck in
poverty with Hitler’s trains running through you
and countries crumbling before you, you’d be
illegal too.
Musk gives the Hitler salute. Or is it the Roman
salute? You know, the one you do to Mussolini.
My mother’s row house in the Italian section of
D.C. was searched by the FBI for possible
connections to Mussolini. Every Italian house
was.
Male and female. Since when was that an easy
divide?
Melania hides her face under a boater hat just as
America hides her soul under a bushel.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
It snowed here. I can’t shovel. Uncontrolled high
blood pressure. A man and his brother shoveled
for me. Carlos and Zé. They won’t be here
tomorrow.
I worked at the Library of Congress for twenty
years. Our guards are the same as the Capitol
guards. On January 6th our guard was killed.
There are no degrees of separation. Separation is
an illusion.
I am scared. I feel that I am. I know that I am not
illegal. I am my parents. Illegal. I am a foreigner.
I am awake.
Author’s note: Father married Mother and became a U.S. citizen. Mother was already a citizen.
Roberto Christiano won the 2010 Fiction Prize from Northern Virginia Review. He received a Pushcart Prize nomination for his poem, Why I Sang at Dinner, in Prairie Schooner. His poetry is anthologized in The Gávea–Brown Book of Portuguese-American Poetry (Brown University). His full legnth collection, Port of Leaving, is published by Finishing Line Press. Other poems have appeared in The New Verse News, Rattle, The Washington Post, Writer.org, and The Sow's Ear.
