Back to Previous ICE Agents Storm My Porch

By Maria Melendez Kelson

 The Indiscriminate Citizenry of Earth

are out to arrest my sense of being a misfit.

“Open up!” they bellow,

hands quiet before my door

that’s only wind and juniper needles, anyway.

You can’t do it, I squeak from inside.

You can’t make me feel at home here

in this time of siege for me and mine, mi raza.

Legalized suspicion of my legitimacy

is now a permanent resident in my gut.

“Fruit of the prickly pear!” they swear,

striding up to my table

to juice me a glass of pink nectar.

They’ve brought welcome baskets

stuffed with proof I’m earthling.

From under a gingham cover,

I tug a dark feather

iridescing green — cohering

to “magpie” thought,

to memory’s chatter,

to mind. Mine.

And here they have my mind translated

into a slate-surfaced pond, which

vibrates in the shape

of a cottonwood’s autumn molt,

which trees me to dirt, which soils me

heat & freeze —

But you’ll always be

one definitive document short! I complain.

Doubts can forever outstrip

your geo-logic.

For which they produce

a lock of my natal dust,

bronzed

to the fluttering fiber

of lacebark pine.

Where’d they get that stuff?

The baskets are bottomless,

and it’s useless for me to insist

on being distinct.

Undergoing re-portation,

I’m awakened to a Center,

where walls

between all beings

are dreamt to dissolve.