by Karen Marker
 |
| Cartoon by Nick Anderson |
Homeland Security Wants Social Media Sites to Expose Anti-ICE Accounts. —The New York Times, February 13, 2026
Still in the down of the dream world a text
comes from Mona that says you are so brave
which means she must have seen my Facebook post
about ICE and knows of the threats made
about collecting names. I also named
the commandment from Exodus about how
we should treat the stranger.
Such a long list of us, once strangers ourselves.
Will they record our names, imprison all of us,
including the thirteen-year-old who read the torah portion
and the rabbi who said all who want to take a stand rise
and come up for the blessings? No one was left in their seats.
We were packed so tight together, all of us touching
someone who was touching the parchment, another name
for light holding the words like a mother. Like the mother
who stood beside me holding her child
with deep brown eyes staring straight into my eyes.
She didn’t look away from my tearing up
like I can’t look away from what keeps me awake
at night thinking of the children in the prison camps,
the names I need to speak so I won’t forget.
Receiving blessings, touching light,
we were one breathing body.
What can I text Mona that will soothe her fear
for the dark skin she got from her Indian Hindu
father, her Mizrachi Jewish mother? Even
with her credentials that made her a top doctor
specialist, gave her a beautiful suburban life,
she’s still afraid for her son and tells me she couldn’t
survive without her medicines, not one day
in that prison camp and I admit I’m just as scared
of being sent away. It’s all that’s unhealed
that makes us even more afraid. It is the cage,
the chains, the clanging doors of our brains,
how the past climbs back up and casts us out.
But now Mona is calling, telling me how
everyone’s been working so hard in Ohio, like one
family. At least for today there’s a stay by the judge,
the Haitians in Springfield are safe.
Karen Marker is an Oakland, CA. poet activist and retired school psychologist whose poetry of protest and hope in response to the news will be coming out as a book in the coming year. Her poetry has appeared in NVN and various other journals including The MacGuffin, The Monterey Poetry Review, the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Slant, and WordPeace. Her book of flash memoir and poetry Beneath the Blue Umbrella is available through Finishing Line Press and explores resilience in face of family trauma.
