HOME IS HERE

by Donna Katzin



We are the bright-faced dreamers,
pimples on our cheeks,                                            
victory in our voices.                                                  
We rally in the shadow of Lady Liberty                              
to walk her message, one step at a time,          
to the highest court in the nation.

Our siblings cheer us on.          
Juancito stretches hands above his head                          
to lift a banner that defies the wind.                                  
Kelli in cornrows sings from her father’s shoulders
as Korean dancers swirl to deep-throated drums
and brass tambourines.

We have come with parents
from Mexico, Nepal, Sierra Leone,
the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens
to keep our families together,
claim our right to live in the only land
we have ever known.

Other marchers’ chants take root
in our tongues, blossom on our lips:
I am somebody…
Keep the pressure on!
El pueblo unido -- jamás será vencido!
Sí se puede!                                    

We add our own:
Aquí estamos, y no nos vamos.
Y si nos hechan, nos regresamos!
New York One, Newsday, Radio Rebeldía
harvest footage, photos, sound-bites
and speeches for history.

We are not invisible.
We are not afraid.                                                        
We have no other country.
We are already home.


Author's Notes:  On Oct. 26, 2019, 150 marchers set out on an 18-day 230-mile march from NYC to protect Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Temporary Protection Status for immigrants seeking refuge from conditions that jeopardized their lives in their own countries. Both programs have been threatened by policies of the current administration—endangering more than 1,000,000 people in the US. The marchers headed for Washington, DC to bear witness at the November 12 Supreme Court hearings on the status of DACA.

Chants
Aquí  estamos               We are here
Y no nos vamos             And we are not leaving.
Y si nos hechan             And if you deport us
Nos regresamos            We will return.

I am somebody! A mantra led weekly by the Rev. Jesse Jackson at Operation PUSH meetings in Chicago, where more than 1,000 black youth gathered every week in the 1970s.
Keep the pressure on! A slogan from the anti-apartheid movement in the 1990’s after Mandela’s release from prison, but before the fall of apartheid.
El pueblo unido -- jamás será vencido! The people united—will never be defeated—a chant that rocked the streets of Salvador Allende’s Chile in the 1970s and after.
Sí se puede! Yes we can—a rallying cry of the United Farmworkers in the 1970s, picked up by many movements and leaders since, including Barack Obama.


Donna Katzin is the founding executive director of Shared Interest, a fund that mobilizes the human and financial resources of low-income communities of color in South and Southern Africa. A board member of Community Change in the U.S., and co-coordinator of Tipitapa Partners working in Nicaragua, she has written extensively about South Africa, community development and impact investing. Published in journals and sites including TheNewVerse.News and The Mom Egg, she is the author of With the Hands, a book of poems and photographs about post-apartheid South Africa’s process of giving birth to itself.

MY BORDER WALL

by Kathy Dahms Roger

I fully understand the need
for an occasional well-built wall
but when its intent is cruel
and its purpose ludicrous,
I'm incensed and inspired
to submit my own designs.

First, for an easy climb, existing walls
will have ladders installed.
Shorter ones will be made shorter
to allow a quick step-over. Others
will receive functional stiles.

In the desert, each wall will have
a water fountain for cooling off,
drinking, and bathing. There will be
sheltering roofs with signs that read
Welcome! in rainbow colors.
Where there are rivers, there will now
be free ferries to provide safe passage.

My new-style walls, of such artful
materials as stone, brick, or wood
will curve with the earth and have
sturdy foundations. Any studs will be
widely spaced but with no crossbars.
This will allow effortless entry and give
the structures the appearance of open
gates. Some walls will simply be a series
of doors, all unlocked, of course,
that swing in either direction. And some
will be quirky curtains - of shiny beads or
canvas or even tissue for quick disintegration.

All new arrivals will be given
a handshake and a hamburger.


Kathy Dahms Rogers lives and writes in Long Beach, CA.

MEN WITH NO LIPS

by Tricia Knoll

I’ve learned to be afraid of them.
Someone is going to tell a lie.
Go after the drug peddlers, ignore
drug companies pumping opiods.
Refurbish Hotel Guantanamo
with used mattresses from high-rise hotels.
Breathe deep of clean, clean coal.
Pretend the sick get health care
or that your dreams are equal
to those of people without a country.
I'm never afraid to kneel
and know its rightness.

White guys who smile by folding
their lips in, straight lines across the face
to hide  the aging of the down curves
but not to show teeth. Some public relations
gimmick to refrain from being read as wolf,
predator, out to get you. Smuggy. Smirky.
Someone is telling a lie.  I’ve known frogs
I trusted more.


Tricia Knoll is an Oregon poet who once heard of an art installation by Robbie Conal called "Men With No Lips." So here we are in the news of the State of the Union. Men without lips.

"Men With No Lips" by Robbie Conal

"Can't Even" by Robbie Conal

DANCING THE COMPROMISE WALTZ

by George Salamon

Congressional Republicans: They more or less held their ground when the government shut down after Friday's midnight deadline passed, and in the end, Democrats compromised way more than Republicans to open the government back up. —Amber Phillips, The Washington Post, January 22, 2018. Photo: Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) clink glasses in a toast Monday on Capitol Hill after senators reached an agreement to advance a bill ending government shutdown. (Andrew Harnik/AP via The Washington Post, January 22, 2018)

Since the Reagan revolution
Bulls have been running our lives.
Swearing to uphold the Constitution,
They dance to a Wall Street beat.
Other political animals are squealing,
They march right up to the bulls
Grunting discreetly under their breath:
Let's make a little compromise,
Just a tiny little compromise,
This time on immigration,
So that just a tiny bit of decency dies.
Whenever you seek to banish the
Better aspirations of this nation,
We'll stand up and fight you
Until we make just a tiny little compromise,
So that we can be sure
Just a tiny bit of freedom vanishes,
A tiny bit of equality is thwarted,
A tiny bit of hope is dashed
Until you kill the people's dream.
For which there may be no compromise.

George Salamon remembers helping voters to the polls in Massachusetts to cast their ballots for Adlai Stevenson in 1956. Were those the days?

MOTHER EARTH

by Scot Siegel

Image source: America By the Numbers

Record snowfall in Australia.
Record wildfires across the west.
Record hurricanes and floods
Batter the Gulf, and bear down
On the Eastern Seaboard. In Texas
A preacher locks a door. Loss of
Permafrost in the Arctic, and don't
Ignore that rift across Antarctica.
105° in San Francisco. Smoke
On the coast so thick you can't breathe.
The president wants a wall. No,
He wants a garbage chute. Dreamers
Have no place in this country. Christ,
They have no place at all. Who are
The Dreamers? What does it mean
To dream? God, it makes me want to stop
Cursing, and get some religion.
The real kind. God, anytime now.


Scot Siegel, Oregon poet and city planner, is the author of five books of poetry, most recently The Constellation of Extinct Stars and Other Poems (2016) and Thousands Flee California Wildflowers (2012), both from Salmon Poetry of Ireland. His poetry is part of the permanent art installation along the Portland, Oregon Light Rail Transit ‘Orange Line.’

SPIDER CAUGHT IN THE ASH WEB

by Tricia Knoll

Image source: Hiveminer

Ash flakes into the new fall spider’s web
on the corn stalks. Wind ferried specks
from the wildfires raging on the cliffs,
smoke hazard on the east-west freeway,
a breathing caution. Ash on the rose petals,
fading ones facing diminishing blooms.

The Dreamers’ frail web tears,
dragged down under ash, victim
of fires hundreds of miles away.
An urge to struggle free of this
drift acknowledges the flames
of hope that kindled the work,
the time of learning to weather
seasons, grow up in storms,
and pursue the road of their lives.

Tricia Knoll is an Oregon poet watching the ashes of burning trees fall on Portland, Oregon. Ash coating the garden flowers, tomato plants, mucking up windshields. At the same time, the news on DACA and its impact on hundreds of thousands of young people seems overwhelming.