Support for this project was provided by the Great Lakes Colleges Association as part of its Global Crossroads Initiative, made possible by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

I. Becoming American

Madison VanHorn, Ishana Sundar

Poetry about the immigrant experience and the melancholy of displacement

and loss in the U.S.

Title page image credit:

Delanoix, Anthony. “Statue of liberty.” Unsplash, Unsplash, 20 June 2015. https://unsplash.com/photos/hv5pLutRkCI

Introduction

The American Dream is one of, if not the best marketed set of ideals in history. It has convinced millions (43.3 million in 2017, according to the Migration Policy Institute (Zong et al.)) of people to leave their homes, loved ones, languages, and everything they know behind, all for a shot at living this dream. What is it about the American Dream that instills such hope within people? Why do they not pursue La Rêve Français, or The Australian Dream with the same passion? James Truslow Adams, in his book ‘The Epic of America’ describes the American Dream to be a life that was “better and richer and fuller” (Library of Congress). And in the land of opportunity, of milk and honey, of freedom and of dreams coming true, a better, richer, fuller life seemed almost inevitable.

But it was not so. Did all those people who packed up their lives in suitcases and hauled them to the United States by means both legal and illegal find greener grass on the other side? In a word: No. Immigrants crawled across borders and swam across seas to face discrimination, slavery, threats, and probably worse living conditions than those back home for just the chance of pursuing this dream. A few did see succeed, but they are far from being the majority. The beautifully depicted ideal of the U.S.A. is as carefully constructed as a spider’s web, but the life experiences of an immigrant is hidden and isolated the way the spider is depicted in ‘Banishment’.

As an Indian, I, Ishanna, have been watching the scale tip, and the number of Indian and Chinese immigrants outnumber those from other countries by far. I have waved goodbye to many family members at airports and receive new shirts and chocolates from America every year in the mail. The concept of immigration is by no means a foreign topic, and it comes up often when discussing the idea of “borders”. Immigration is an arduous but not uncommon struggle that has been captured beautifully in many ways by the poets in this anthology.

This anthology contains a collection of American poetry. We use ‘American’ because every poet is either a first or second generation immigrant, not despite of it. As every poem uncovers more intimate details about the lives of immigrants in America, many questions about the American dream arise. The reality of moving through social and economic standings are challenging and it is rarely happens. The stories and lives of immigrants are vital to share, and after all, make up the history of the United States of America. It is an answer to the question- does every immigrant who pursues the American Dream achieve it? Do they come come close? Can they come close?

Of all the poets, five are East-Asian in origin while four come from countries south of the United States, which inadvertently describes real-time immigration statistics. Five are by women and five by men, although the gender of the poet had no role to play in the selection process. The selection process began with Audre Lorde and Wang Ping’s poetry. Themes from their poems, and the stories behind them, inspired the collection of other poems that could tell us more about the immigration process from different perspectives.

The anthology covers multiple themes. We begin with the difficulties immigrants face in the process of migration and acclimatization. In “In Colorado…”, Eduardo Corral talks of the low wage jobs his father worked, the rude attitudes of his coworkers and the struggles he went through, while Sonia Guinansaca’s “Bursting of photographs…” uses lots of imagery to bring out immigrants “tracing the silhouettes of (their) grandparents” and “dig(ing) out the roots/of (their) home”. Education is an important part of the American Dream, and Guinansaca also mentions how immigrants “chase vocabulary for value”, which is a reiteration of the belief that you need to be educated to be of any value, and to be successful. There is also always a sense of longing or need not being met by the speaker of the poem.

The second theme explored is that of identity. What do immigrants bring with them when they settle elsewhere, and what do they leave behind. Wang Ping attempts to answer this in “Things We Carry To The Sea”. The essence of what an immigrant carries can be felt in the lines “We carry old homes along the spine, new dreams in our chests/We carry yesterday, today and tomorrow”. She ends the poem with words in various languages, stating that one very important thing immigrants carry over is their language.

Language is an integral aspect of one’s identity, and the third theme. Multiple poems in this anthology incorporate the use of non-english words within their texts, such as “In Colorado…” and “Translation for Mama.”. (After much deliberation, the poems were left as they were found, with no translation except those provided by the poets themselves. The inclusion of foreign words into every English poem was done with purpose, one we wanted to highlight). It is impressed among immigrants to only use English and restrict the use of their own languages. Wang Ping describes language as a “birthright & curse” in “Immigrants Can’t Write Poetry”. Hai-Dang Phan describes how his father learnt English in “My Father’s…”, and reiterates an earlier point made about education- that although immigrants work hard to learn English and get and education, they may still never achieve the American Dream.

Immigrants carry with them their culture, an idea that Regie Cabico expresses in “Mango Poem” - throughout the poem, the Mango is symbolic of his homeland and its culture. Conversely, sometimes the things you don’t carry can affect your new life. Bhuchung D. Sonam’s “Banishment” describes the loneliness the poet feels, without their family and friends. Family relationships are also affected by migration. Richard Blanco’s “Translation for Mama” and Audre Lorde’s “From the House…” both talk of how being second generation immigrants has affected their relationships with their mothers.

The anthology ends with Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Steps”, a short poem about the legacy immigrants leave behind. It is not uncommon for second generation immigrants to completely assimilate into American culture and forget their own stories. It ends the anthology on a bittersweet note.

All the poems are unconstrained by any traditional verse or style, and for good reason. There have always been people in power who detest the idea of immigrants and do not want them taking up any space. Using unique, non-traditional poetry to express their feelings is close to empowerment for this subdued population, as they are claiming a new space for themselves, one that is entirely their own. For instance, in “In Colorado…” the title of the poem functions as the first line as well. With the exception of Wang Ping’s poems and “Steps”, every poem is also personal to the poet, using either “I” or “my” often.

Through the process of creating this anthology, we have learned that immigration is much more than crossing a border. It is leaving your home on the wings of hope. It is starting from the bottom, being belittled and demeaned, and losing your words. It is creating distances between a migrant and their old home, but not bringing them closer to their new one. It is trying to be two, sometimes three, people at once, but being nobody at the same time. This is the life of an American immigrant, as told to us by the nine amazing poets whose works we have used below. It is our hope that one day immigrants will feel at home within their skins and outside of it. That one day they do achieve the American Dream, but not the materialistic one of houses and cars and good schools, but one where they feel fulfilled with their better, richer, and fuller lives.

Works Cited:

Library of Congress. “The American Dream.” The Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/lessons/american-dream/students/thedream.html. Accessed 12 April 2018.

Zong, Jie, Jeanne Batalova, and Jeffrey Hallock. “Frequently Requested Statistics on Immigrants and Immigration in the United States.” Migration Policy Institute, 8 February 2018, https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested-statistics-immigrants-and-immigration-united-states. Accessed 14 April 2018.

In Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes

Eduardo Corral

in a Tex-Mex restaurant. His co-workers,
unable to utter his name, renamed him Jalapeño.

If I ask for a goldfish, he spits a glob of phlegm
into a jar of water. The silver letters

on his black belt spell Sangrón. Once, borracho,
at dinner, he said: Jesus wasn’t a snowman.

Arriba Durango. Arriba Orizaba. Packed
into a car trunk, he was smuggled into the States.

Frijolero. Greaser. In Tucson he branded
cattle. He slept in a stable. The horse blankets

oddly fragrant: wood smoke, lilac. He’s an illegal.
I’m an Illegal-American. Once, in a grove

of saguaro, at dusk, I slept next to him. I woke
with his thumb in my mouth. ¿No qué no

tronabas, pistolita? He learned English
by listening to the radio. The first four words

he memorized: In God We Trust. The fifth:
Percolate. Again and again I borrow his clothes.

He calls me Scarecrow. In Oregon he picked apples.
Braeburn. Jonagold. Cameo. Nightly,

to entertain his cuates, around a campfire,
he strummed a guitarra, sang corridos. Arriba

Durango. Arriba Orizaba. Packed into
a car trunk, he was smuggled into the States.

Greaser. Beaner. Once, borracho, at breakfast,
he said: The heart can only be broken

once, like a window. ¡No mames! His favorite
belt buckle: an águila perched on a nopal.

If he laughs out loud, his hands tremble.
Bugs Bunny wants to deport him. César Chávez

wants to deport him. When I walk through
the desert, I wear his shirt. The gaze of the moon

stitches the buttons of his shirt to my skin.
The snake hisses. The snake is torn.

Corral, Eduardo. “In Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes.” Poetry, vol. 200, no. 1, 2012, pp.10-11. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23249339

Eduardo Corral read this piece aloud at a convention in 2013, where he explained: “If language is a way of viewing the world, I refuse to privilege one way of viewing over another.” This also provides readers with the reason he does not italicize or provide a glossary for the words in Spanish. (Published Dec. 19, 2013 by Strand Bookstore on YouTube.) The things Corral and his father share show readers a unique bond that can only be made between a select few. They share the names that were given to them and wear the same clothes. Not only literally, but they both contain within them the same ‘fabric’ that makes up who they are, and therefore controls how they are treated and what they experience. This physical and genetic connection is as deeply rooted as the connection the poet makes through the poem, of the quest to obtain ability in the English language, which broadens their connection to other immigrants in America as well.

Bursting of photographs after trying to squeeze out old memories

Sonia Guiñansaca

They don’t tell you this when you migrate:

Old Polaroid’s are never enough
You are left tracing the silhouette of your grandparents
Or what ever is left

Of them

How many years has it been,
5,10, or 20?
It’s been 20

20

In those 20 years you have been asked

To hide your accent

Sow your tongue

So that no more Rrrr’s roll out

Straighten up
So that white Jesus accepts you

So that the lawyer helps you

Dig out the roots

Of your home

From underneath your nails
Cut your trenza

Pledge allegiance to the flag
And when you cannot,
Each thread will cut through

Every inch of you
To teach you, your kind was not meant

For this country

Dad told you that they will measure your success based on how smart you could be
So, you tried to be smart

Books after books you chased vocabulary for value
Legislation to give you meaning

Yes, sir. I am a skilled worker
Yes, sir. I can contribute
No, sir. I haven’t committed any crimes
Pinned. Against One. Another

You remember that your mother almost didn’t make it through the Border
Or any legislation, this time around

She won’t make it into health care packages
She won’t be remembered during press conferences

She will be dissected, research
How much she doesn’t belong will be published

They don’t tell you this when you migrate

PBSNewsHour. “Sonia Guiñansaca reads “Bursting of photographs after trying to squeeze out old memories”.” Soundcloud, 28 Sept 2015 https://soundcloud.com/pbsnewshour/sonia-guinansaca -reads-bursting-of-photographs-after-trying-to-squeeze-out-old-memories

Family members are never forgotten completely, but when one is assimilating to a new home, they may make changes that destroy their connections to those they left behind. In this poem, the poet places emphasis on the struggles of learning a new language, pledging one’s allegiance and labour to their new home, all at the cost of losing their connection to their customs and family.

Things We Carry On The Sea

Wang Ping

We carry tears in our eyes: good-bye father, good-bye mother

We carry soil in small bags: may home never fade in our hearts

We carry names, stories, memories of our villages, fields, boats

We carry scars from proxy wars of greed

We carry carnage of mining, droughts, floods, genocides

We carry dust of our families and neighbors incinerated in mushroom clouds

We carry our islands sinking under the sea

We carry our hands, feet, bones, hearts and best minds for a new life

We carry diplomas: medicine, engineer, nurse, education, math, poetry, even if they mean nothing to the other shore

We carry railroads, plantations, laundromats, bodegas, taco trucks, farms, factories, nursing homes, hospitals, schools, temples…built on our ancestors’ backs

We carry old homes along the spine, new dreams in our chests

We carry yesterday, today and tomorrow

We’re orphans of the wars forced upon us

We’re refugees of the sea rising from industrial wastes

And we carry our mother tongues爱(ai)，حب (hubb), ליבע (libe), amor, love

平安 (ping’an), سلام ( salaam), shalom, paz, peace 希望（xi’wang), أمل (’amal), hofenung, esperanza, hope, hope, hope

As we drift…in our rubber boats…from shore…to shore…to shore…

Ping, Wang. “Things We Carry To Sea.” Poets.org, 2018 https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/things-we-carry-sea. Accessed 11 April 2018.

Originally published in New American Poetry, 1960.

“Things We Carry…” reads like a list of things a refugee, or a migrant, misses when they leave home. Ping begins with the most excruciating pain they can experience: leaving their loved ones behind. She utilizes repetition to emphasize unity. This poem is particularly broad as she also includes various words that express similar meanings in different languages. The poems seems to imply that the main form of communication that unified the immigrants was English, which is rather ironic as it is also described by many as a source of distress, confusion and sometimes, discrimination. The people immigrating to America seem to share similar hopes and pains, which is captured in this poem.

Immigrant Can’t Write Poetry

Wang Ping

“Oh no, not with your syntax,” said H.V. to her daughter-in-law, a Chinese writing poetry in English

She walk to table
She walks to a table

She walk to table now
She is walking to a table now

What difference it make
What difference does it make

In Nature, no completeness
No sentence really complete thought

Language, our birthright & curse
Pay no mind to immigrant syntax

Poetry, born as beast
Move best when free, undressed

Ping, Wang. “Immigrant Can’t Write Poetry.” American Journal of Poetry, vol. 4, 1 Jan 2018, http://theamericanjournalofpoetry.com/v4-wang.html. Accessed 3 April 2018.

There cannot be a more frustrating feeling than that of having your language of expression criticised by your loved one’s family, especially when you are an immigrant (both to their country and their family). The first three stanzas are couplets wherein a sentence is written twice; the first, grammatically incorrect and the second, correct. Ping addresses the frustration felt by an individual who is ridiculed for expressing themselves in a language that does not come naturally to them. It almost seems like the poem was inspired by the comment above it. The poem leaves readers with ideas of how the English language has been put up on a pedestal, above all others.

My Father’s “Norton Introduction to Literature,” Third Edition (1981)

Hai-Dang Phan

Certain words give him trouble: cannibals, puzzles, sob,
bosom, martyr, deteriorate, shake, astonishes, vexed, ode ...
These he looks up and studiously annotates in Vietnamese.
Ravish means cướp đoạt; shits is like when you have to đi ỉa;
mourners are those whom we say are full of buồn rầu.
For “even the like precurse of feared events” think báo trước.

Its thin translucent pages are webbed with his marginalia,
graphite ghosts of a living hand, and the notes often sound
just like him: “All depend on how look at thing,” he pencils
after “I first surmised the Horses’ Heads / Were toward Eternity —”
His slanted handwriting is generally small, but firm and clear.
His pencil is a No. 2, his preferred Hi-Liter, arctic blue.

I can see my father trying out the tools of literary analysis.
He identifies the “turning point” of “The Short and Happy Life
of Francis Macomber”; underlines the simile in “Both the old man
and the child stared ahead as if they were awaiting an apparition.”
My father, as he reads, continues to notice relevant passages
and to register significant reactions, but increasingly sorts out

his ideas in English, shaking off those Vietnamese glosses.
1981 was the same year we vượt biển and came to America,
where my father took Intro Lit (“for fun”), Comp Sci (“for job”).
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” he murmurs
something about the “dark side of life how awful it can be”
as I begin to track silence and signal to a cold source.

Reading Ransom’s “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter,”
a poem about a “young girl’s death,” as my father notes,
how could he not have been “vexed at her brown study /
Lying so primly propped,” since he never properly observed
(I realize this just now) his own daughter’s wake.
Lấy làm ngạc nhiên về is what it means to be astonished.

Her name was Đông Xưa, Ancient Winter, but at home she’s Bebe.
“There was such speed in her little body, / And such lightness
in her footfall, / It is no wonder her brown study / Astonishes
us all.” In the photo of her that hangs in my parents’ house
she is always fourteen months old and staring into the future.
In “reeducation camp” he had to believe she was alive

because my mother on visits “took arms against her shadow.”
Did the memory of those days sweep over him like a leaf storm
from the pages of a forgotten autumn? Lost in the margins,
I’m reading the way I discourage my students from reading.
But this is “how we deal with death,” his black pen replies.
Assume there is a reason for everything, instructs a green asterisk.

Then between pp. 896-97, opened to Stevens’ “Sunday Morning,”
I pick out a newspaper clipping, small as a stamp, an old listing
from the 404-Employment Opps State of Minnesota, and read:
For current job opportunities dial (612) 297-3180. Answered 24 hrs.
When I dial, the automated female voice on the other end
tells me I have reached a non-working number.

Phan, Hai-Dang. “My Father’s “Norton Introduction to Literature,” Third Edition (1981).” Poetry, vol. 208, no. 2, 2015. Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/58485/my-fathers-norton-introduction-to-literature-third-edition-1981.

Learning how to read English is a stage in one’s life that is given less importance than it is due. We who primarily use English do not often think of the struggle immigrants go through to learn it too, as learning to read becomes essential for them to get jobs and communicate. We also often forget that Immigrants already think and express themselves in another language, better than they do in English. This poem emphasizes the work an Immigrant, the poet’s father, puts into learning to read English. It also tells readers that while learning English is vital when applying for a job, it does not guarantee one’s acceptance either.

Translation for Mama

Richard Blanco

What I’ve written for you, I have always written
in English, my language of silent vowel endings
never translated into your language of silent h’s.
               Lo que he escrito para ti, siempre lo he escrito
               en inglés, en mi lengua llena de vocales mudas
               nunca traducidas a tu idioma de haches mudas.
I’ve transcribed all your old letters into poems
that reconcile your exile from Cuba, but always
in English. I’ve given you back the guajiro roads
you left behind, stretched them into sentences
punctuated with palms, but only in English.
               He transcrito todas tus cartas viejas en poemas
               que reconcilian tu exilio de Cuba, pero siempre
               en inglés. Te he devuelto los caminos guajiros
               que dejastes atrás, transformados en oraciones
               puntuadas por palmas, pero solamente en inglés.
I have recreated the pueblecito you had to forget,
forced your green mountains up again, grown
valleys of sugarcane, stars for you in English.
               He reconstruido el pueblecito que tuvistes que olvidar,
               he levantado de nuevo tus montañas verdes, cultivado
               la caña, las estrellas de tus valles, para ti, en inglés.
In English I have told you how I love you cutting
gladiolas, crushing ajo, setting cups of dulce de leche
on the counter to cool, or hanging up the laundry
at night under our suburban moon. In English,
               En inglés te he dicho cómo te amo cuando cortas
               gladiolas, machacas ajo, enfrías tacitas de dulce de leche
               encima del mostrador, o cuando tiendes la ropa
               de noche bajo nuestra luna en suburbia. En inglés
I have imagined you surviving by transforming
yards of taffeta into dresses you never wear,
keeping Papá’s photo hinged in your mirror,
and leaving the porch light on, all night long.
               He imaginado como sobrevives transformando
               yardas de tafetán en vestidos que nunca estrenas,
               la foto de papá que guardas en el espejo de tu cómoda,
               la luz del portal que dejas encendida, toda la noche.
               Te he captado en inglés en la mesa de la cocina
               esperando que cuele el café, que hierva la leche
               y que tu vida acostumbre a tu vida. En inglés
               has aprendido a adorer tus pérdidas igual que yo.
I have captured you in English at the kitchen table
waiting for the café to brew, the milk to froth,
and your life to adjust to your life. In English
you’ve learned to adore your losses the way I do.

Blanco, Richard. “Translation for Mama.” Poets.org, https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/translation-mam%C3%A1.

Originally published in Directions to the Beach of the Dead, Richard Blanco, 2005.

Richard Blanco exclusively shares the life of his mother in English in “Translation for Mama”. He expresses things like where she comes from and the beautiful little things she does. Blanco writes primarily in English. He shares his personal thoughts of his mother with his English-speaking audience of English, but can only provide his mother with a poorly-translated version of the same, that is never quite right. This poem still begins and ends with English but the use of English has been used to hold her life to the light, and tell us about someone we may have never known about otherwise.

From the House of Yemanjá

Audre Lorde

My mother had two faces and a frying pot

where she cooked up her daughters

into girls

before she fixed our dinner.

My mother had two faces

and a broken pot

where she hid out a perfect daughter

who was not me

I am the sun and moon and forever hungry

for her eyes.

I bear two women upon my back

one dark and rich and hidden

in the ivory hungers of the other

mother

pale as a witch

yet steady and familiar

brings me bread and terror

in my sleep

her breasts are huge exciting anchors

in the midnight storm.

All this has been

before

in my mother's bed

time has no sense

I have no brothers

and my sisters are cruel.

Mother I need

mother I need

mother I need your blackness now

as the august earth needs rain.

I am

the sun and moon and forever hungry

the sharpened edge

where day and night shall meet

and not be

one.

Lorde, Audre. “From the House of Yemanjá.” Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42578/from-the-house-of-yemanja. Accessed 24 March 2018.

Originally published in The Black Unicorn, Audre Lorde, 1978

“Yemanja” is a Goddess; she is the queen of the ocean in the Umbanda religion. She represents motherhood and also personifies the moon. In this poem, Audre Lorde expresses her inner conflict between feeling the need to act a certain way, and being herself. The poem is primarily about this identity crisis the poet faces, where her mother wants her to be more like her lighter-skinned peers. It should be noted that Lorde’s parents were of Afro-caribbean descent, and her mother had lighter skin than she did and often was assumed to be Spanish. This poem also reflects the difficulties of an immigrant parent trying to get their children to ‘fit in’ as much as possible.

It also reflects the modern mindset of second-generation immigrants who are no longer ashamed of their heritage and want to learn more about it. While their parents struggled with their differences, the children celebrate them. She repeats, “I need your blackness now” to emphasise how desperately she wants to be herself.

Works cited:

The Guru of GuruGuay. “Uruguay Festivals - Day of the Goddess of the Sea.” The Blog, http://www.guruguay.com/uruguay-festivals-celebrations-yemanja/ Published Feb. 2, 2015.

Audre Lorde Biography. TheFamousPeople.com. https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/audre-lorde-243.php. October 03, 2017

Mango Poem

Regie Cabico

Mother fetches the fruit from the mango grove
       behind closed bamboo.
       Rips its paper-leather cover during midday recess,
before English class, describes their dance
peaches plums cantaloupes before my first-world
       eyes. When the sun blazed on the dust,

she let the mellifluous fluids
       fall on her assignment books.
Where the mangos were first planted, mother,
an infant, hid under gravel
swaddled by Lola, my grandmother,
after my mother’s aunt and uncle
were tied to the trunk
       and stabbed
by the Japanese. Mother and daughter living off
       fallen mangos, the pits planted in darkness,
       before I was born.

We left the Philippines
       for California dodging
U.S. Customs with the forbidden fruit,
       thinking who’d deprive mother of her mangos.
Head down, my father denies that we have perishable
       foods, waving passports in the still air,
motioning for us
       to proceed towards the terminal.
Behind a long line of travelers,

my sisters surround mother
like shoji screens as she hides the newspaper-covered
       fruit between her legs. Mangos sleeping
in the hammock of her skirt, a brilliant batik
       billowing from the motion
of airline caddies pushing suitcases
       on metal carts.

We walk around mother
       forming a crucifix where she was center.
On the plane as we cross time zones, mom unwraps
her ripe mangos, the ones from the tree Lola planted
before she gave birth to my mother,

the daughter that left home to be a nurse
in the States,
       who’d marry a Filipino navy man
       and have three children of her own. Mother eating
the fruit whose juices rain
      over deserts and cornfields.

Cabico, Regie. “Mango Poem.” Poets.org, 2014, https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/mango-poem. Accessed 12 April 2018.

In “Mango Poem”, Regie Cabico shares with readers the story of his family. He does this through the analogy between mangos and his family, most notably his mother. His mother’s life story begins at the trunk of a mango tree as a baby while her aunt and uncle lose their lives. Living in poverty feasting on the mangos was the story Regie was told. The mangos were hidden between his mother’s legs as they came to the U.S., which could be an analogy to their culture which needed to be hidden too. But people cannot separate themselves from their culture; it is a part of them. But eventually, the mangos survived the way his mother did and arrived at the U.S.

Banishment

Bhuchung D. Sonam

Away from home

I live in my thirty-sixth rented room

With a trapped bee

and a three-legged spider

Spider crawls on the wall

and I on the floor

Bee bangs at the window

and I on the table

Often we stare at each other

Sharing our pool of loneliness

They paint the wall

with droppings and webs

I give them isolated

words net, maze, tangle

wings, buzz, flutter

Away from home

My minutes are hours

Spider travels from the window to the ceiling

Bee flies from the window to the bin

I stare out of the window

Neither speaks each other's tongue

I wish

You would go deaf

Before my silence

Sonam, Bhuchung D.. “Banishment” Indian Literature, vol. 55, no.5 (265), 2011, pp. 71. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23348622.

The poet is a Tibetan refugee living in Dharamshala, India. He has not migrated voluntarily; he was driven out of his home. He writes this poem as a lonely immigrant with no place to go. The speaker of this poem relates more to the bugs in his apartment than he does to other people. The spider has withstood the test of time as he only has three legs and thus he doesn’t reach his full potential and cannot take over the land he lives on. The bee and the spider are both trapped, but the spider has no chance of survival if he were to return to where he came from. The spider ‘crawls’, but the bee ‘bangs’, and the last line of the second stanza reads, “Neither speak each other’s tongue”. The bugs live different lives and the speaker relates to both. At the end of the poem the bugs travel into solitude just as the speaker has, over and over again.

Steps

Naomi Shihab Nye

A man letters the sign for his grocery
in Arabic and English.
Paint dries more quickly in English.
The thick swoops and curls of Arabic letters
stay moist and glistening
till tomorrow when the children
show up jingling their dimes.

They have learned the currency of the New World,
carrying wishes for gum and candies
shaped like fish.
They float through the streets,
diving deep to the bottom,
nosing rich layers of crusted shell.

One of these children will tell a story
that keeps her people alive.
We don't know yet which one she is.
Girl in the red sweater dangling a book bag,
sister with eyes pinned to the barrel
of pumpkin seeds.
They are lettering the sidewalk with their steps.

They are separate and together and a little bit late.
Carrying a creased note, "Don't forget."
Who wrote it? They've already forgotten.
A purple fish sticks to the back of the throat.
Their long laughs are boats they will ride and ride,
making the shadows that cross each other's smiles.

Nye, Naomi Shihab. “Steps.” American Arab Institute, http://www.aaiusa.org/together-we-came-naomi-shihab-nye. Accessed 11 April 2018.

Originally published in 19 Varieties of Gazelle, Naomi Shihab Nye, 2002.

Children are the future and they are the ones who will share the stories of the past; this is an important theme in ‘Steps’. The speaker decides that a storyteller of the last generation will be a girl and she will be the mother of the future because she will share the past. The two girls, however, are human and will forget many things, but evidence will remain. The imagery of boats and fish may be referring to the journey made to get to America and the way immigrants flow into the United States. The author may be pointing out that although there are many who forget the story of their people, the United States is only made better when more people migrate there. This is evident in the last two lines; “Their long laughs are boats they will ride and ride, making the shadows that cross each other's smiles.” There is shared joy when interacting with other people through thoughtful inclusion. This is done in the act of putting two languages on a sign, providing a good such as candy, or making someone laugh or smile.

II. Breaking Borders

Ian Longan & Nived Dharmaraj

Introduction

The theme of this poetry anthology is ‘Borders’. The curators of this anthology have interpreted the theme in a restrictive sense, that is, borders that society places on individuals, borders that one yearns to break free of. One can see this theme present in all of the ten poems collected; however, in some the theme may be more obvious, while in others it may run as subtext.
            For example, in the poem Caged Bird by Maya Angelou, one can clearly see the presence of borders as restrictive themes. The repeated lines of “The caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still and his tune is heard on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom”, clearly depicts the want for freedom and the restrictive theme is further emphasised by the imagery of “his narrow cage […] his bars of rage his wings are clipped and his feet are tied”.
            However, in 4am Joke by Zackary Medlin, the restrictive theme is a lot more subtly present. It is obvious that the speaker of the poem has gone through some hardship in the relatively recent past. This is suggested when he thinks of telling the waitress that “[he’s] got nowhere else to go” because “going upstairs to a bed that size, alone, feels too much like giving up”, heavily implying the death of a significant other. As far as restrictions go in this poem, the speaker is restricted by himself after something terrible has happened, but we start to see a sense of freedom near the end, introducing the main theme of the anthology as a whole.
            This also ties to the positioning of the poems in the particular order that they are in. As one reads the anthology, one sees a clear progression from being helpless to being hopeful to being defiant. There is a gradual shift from being completely closed in and not knowing how to deal with one’s restrictions to breaking free of one’s bonds and being fiercely proud of doing so.
            For example, one of the initial poems Driving, Not Washing by Richard Siken, clearly shows individuals feeling like no matter where they go, they are faced by people who strive to put them down. The use of lines such as “driving away from something shameful and half-remembered” and “they’re trying to drive you into the ground, to see if anything walks away” indicates the helplessness of the individuals from attempting to escape their restrictions. Further, the poem’s opening line “it starts with bloodshed, always bloodshed” sets the pessimistic tone for the rest of the poem.
            I look at the world by Langston Hughes can be found somewhere in the middle of this anthology. The reason for this placement is because though there is still the looming presence of restrictive themes- “This fenced-off narrow space Assigned to me”- one also sees a change in tone, where the narrator of the poem decides to do something about the restrictions: “That all these walls oppression builds Will have to go!”.
            Finally, towards the end of the anthology, one sees poems such as Pluto Shits on the Universe by Fatima Asgarh. This poem is clearly about purposefully rebelling against one’s suppression, being not only defiant but unapologetic about it. This can be seen through the lines “Today, I broke your solar system. Oops. My bad. Your graph said I was supposed to make a nice little loop around the sun. Naw”, and “Somewhere in the mess of graphs and math and compass you tried to make me follow rules. Rules? Fuck your rules”.
            Therefore, as one can see, there is a clear transition from restrictive to free in terms of the poems present. The reason the curators placed them so was to evoke a sense of being able to take matters into one’s own hands and of a realisation of one’s own strength.
            Another choice made by the curators in terms of positioning of the poems, was the decision to have Walls by Hervey Allen and O.J. Bowles as the first poem and Walls by Marjorie Meeker as the last. This contrast of both of the poems being named exactly the same thing but both being completely different in their message and tone is almost symbolic in nature, since it shows one that it all depends on how looks at the situation. If one looks at their restriction as something that controls them, or if one looks at it as an obstacle that one must overcome.
            In compiling the different poems for the anthology, the curators have learned many things regarding the theme of ‘Borders’. Three in particular should be noticed in the reading of the anthology: the importance of realizing when one is surrounded by borders, the necessary step of accepting the fact of being trapped by them, and finally (and most significantly) the importance of breaking free. The first one can be seen in the beginning of the anthology with the first poem Walls by Hervey Allen and O. J. Bowles. In it, the speaker realizes the different walls surrounding them, from the walls of the houses, to the smoke plumes, to the “street itself”. The speaker insists how these walls “make [him] one with prison folk” who has “found no freedom here at all”. In this poem, the curators hope a very important seed is planted in the reader’s mind -- that of an intense longing and need for freedom, which eventually gets satisfied by the end of the anthology.
            However, this realization of freedom takes time, which is where the second important insight comes in. This insight, of accepting that one is trapped by borders, is exemplified in the poem 4am Joke by Zackary Medlin. In it, the reader in the first part is “on [his] eighth cup of buck-five coffee”, and has been there for eight house, possibly trying to ignore the sorrow in his own mind, as going home “feels too much like giving up”. However, with the spill of the coffee in part II of the poem, the waitress teaches the speaker how to deal with the hardship he’s had to endure. She gives some unlikely and somewhat cryptic advice - that “breaking glass” (which could be any number of things, from being oppressed by others to being trapped by one’s own grief following the death of a loved one) “sounds like laughter”. The poem ends abruptly, but leaves the reader with an odd sense of hope. Somehow, the waitress has drawn parallels between the spilling coffee and the speaker’s own personal situation and offered a silver lining.
            Finally, as the anthology draws to an end, the third and most important insight should become clear to the reader. Being human, as the curators have learned, brings an unstoppable need to be free of bonds, walls, and borders. This is demonstrated in Walls by Marjorie Meeker. In it, the speaker demonstrates this ever-stubborn nature of mankind’s need to be free. It ends with an extremely powerful and hopeful message that the curators hope inspires the reader to not be held in by walls and borders, but to break them: “Tendril of frailest fern can split a rock”.
            A poem that best exemplifies the anthology would be Breaking Out by Marge Piercy. The poem discusses the narrator’s “first political act” of when she broke the stick her parents used to beat her with. Throughout the poem we see mentions of the gender normative life that society forces onto her and how she rejects it completely. Her hate for ironing, dusting, sweeping and other housework can be seen along with her sympathy for her mother who obediently goes along with these norms, and she likens her to “Sisyphus and his rock”, a clear comment on how useless and repetitive she thought the household chores were.
            We see the first glimmers of hope of fleeing this restrictive lifestyle, when the narrator examines her bruises left by the stick, and envisions them as “a map that offered escape, the veins and arteries the roads I could travel to freedom when I grew”. As mentioned before, the poem ends with the narrator breaking the stick, and stating “It was not that I was never again beaten”, indicating that by rebelling she had not destroyed her restrictions yet, that is, the patriarchy was still very much in place. However, what is important here is that she realised that rebellion was possible. The last line of the poem is the most impactful in the curators’ opinion: “This is not a tale of innocence lost but power gained : I would not be Sisyphus, there were things that I should learn to break”. The use of the word ‘should’ instead of ‘could’ is quite interesting, as it implies that the narrator considers it her duty to fight back, and to not just allow her life to be governed by societal norms. This also ties back as to why the curators consider this poem to be a good representative of the anthology as it encourages individuals to break free of their restrictions but does not promise them blind hope.

Walls

By Hervey Allen and O.J. Bowles

Published in 1923 as a part of Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1923 in Boston.

My unrest fumbles like a hand

Along this slender street,

Where walls made out of houses stand

To hinder my retreat.

And always there's a wall of smoke

That rises ply on ply,

And makes me one with prison folk

Who may not view the sky.

I've found no freedom here at all

From walls in this grey town --

The street itself is but a wall

That's lying down!

Caged Bird

By Maya Angelou

Published in 1983 as a part of Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing? in New York.

A free bird leaps

on the back of the wind

and floats downstream

till the current ends

and dips his wing

in the orange sun rays

and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks

down his narrow cage

can seldom see through

his bars of rage

his wings are clipped and

his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings

with a fearful trill

of things unknown

but longed for still

and his tune is heard

on the distant hill

for the caged bird

sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze

and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees

and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn

and he names the sky his own

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams

his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream

his wings are clipped and his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings

with a fearful trill

of things unknown

but longed for still

and his tune is heard

on the distant hill

for the caged bird

sings of freedom.

Driving, Not Washing

By Richard Siken

Published in 2005 as a part of Crush in New Haven.

It starts with bloodshed, always bloodshed, always the same

Running from something larger than yourself story,

shoving money into the jaws of a suitcase, cutting your hair

with a steak knife at a rest stop,

and you’re off, you’re on the run, a fugitive driving away from

something shameful and half-remembered.

They’re hurling their bodies down the freeway

To the smell of gasoline,

Which is the sound of a voice saying I told you so.

Yes, you did dear.

Every story has its chapter in the desert, the long slide from kingdom

to kingdom through the wilderness,

where you learn things, where you’re left to your own devices.

Henry’s driving,

and Theodore’s bleeding shotgun into the upholstery.

It’s a road movie,

a double-feature, two boys striking out across America, while desire,

like a monster, crawls up out of the lake

with all of us watching, with all of us wondering if these two boys will

find a way to figure it out.

Here is the black box, the shut eye,

the bullet pearling in his living skin. This boy, half-destroyed,

screaming Drive into that tree, drive off the embankment.

Henry, make something happen.

But angels are pouring out of the farmland, angels are swarming

over the grassland,

Angels rising from their little dens, arms swinging, wings aflutter,

dropping their white-hot bombs of love.

We are not dirty, he keeps saying. We are not dirty…

They want you to love the whole damn world but you won’t,

you want it all narrowed down to one fleshy man in the bath,

who knows what to do with his body, with his hands.

It should follow,

you know this, like the panels of a comic strip,

we should be belted in, but you still can’t get beyond your skin,

and they’re trying to drive you into the ground, to see if anything

walks away.

Four AM Joke

By Zackary Medlin

Published in 2011 as a part of The Carolina Quarterly in Chapel Hill.

I.
Eight hours out & I'm on my eighth cup
   of buck-five coffee.
           Free refills. The waitress hates me,
   but she smiles,
           calls me hon
anyway.
I would tell her I got nowhere else to go, that going home meant sleeping
on a swaybacked couch
   by the blue flicker bubbling
           through the T.V. screen.
I would tell her that going upstairs
   to a bed that size,
       alone,
           feels too much
               like giving up.
But she doesn't ask.
II.
It's medication time.
As she pours cup number nine, my bottle proves you right--
        I am a child.
The spill skitters pills
    flipping & popping
           across the table contained in a whirl
   of unstable arms and hands,
           the coffee maintains,
                         for a moment, between ledge and ...
hangs
   on the crisis,
   spills slow spirals
           through space,
           collides, dazzles
                   red-grit tiles.
                   The waitress looks down
to me and smiles. She says she thinks breaking glass sounds like laughter.

I look at the World

By Langston Hughes

Published in 1929 as a part of An Anthology of Revolutionary Poetry in New Haven.

I look at the world

From awakening eyes in a black face—

And this is what I see:

This fenced-off narrow space

Assigned to me.

I look then at the silly walls

Through dark eyes in a dark face—

And this is what I know:

That all these walls oppression builds

Will have to go!

I look at my own body

With eyes no longer blind—

And I see that my own hands can make

The world that's in my mind.

Then let us hurry, comrades,

The road to find.

Breaking Out

By Marge Piercy

Published in 1984 in the Harbor Review.

My first political act? I am seeing

two doors that usually stood open,

leaning together like gossips, making

a closet of their corner.

A mangle stood there, for ironing

what i never thought needed it:

sheets, towels, my father’s underwear;

an upright vacuum with its stuffed

sausage bag that deflated with a gusty

sigh as if weary of housework as I,

who swore i would never dust or sweep

after i left home, who hated

to see my mother removing daily

the sludge the air lay down like a snail’s track

so that when in school i read of Sisyphus

and his rock, it was her I

thought of, housewife scrubbing

on raw knees as the factory rained ash.

Nasty stork of the hobnobbing

doors was a wooden yardstick dusty

with chalk marks from hem’s rise and fall.

When I had been judged truly wicked

that stick was the tool of punishment,

I was beaten as I bellowed like a locomotive

as if noise could ward off blows.

My mother wielded it more fiercely

but my father far longer and harder.

I’d twist my head in the mirror to inspect.

I’d study those red and blue mountain

ranges as on a map that offered escape,

the veins and arteries the roads

I could travel to freedom when i grew.

When I was eleven, after a beating

I took the ruler and smashed it to kindling.

Fingering the splinters I could not believe.

How could this rod prove weaker than me?

It was not that i was never again beaten

but in destroying that stick that had measured my pain

the next day i was an adolescent, not a child.

This is not a tale of innocence lost but power

gained : I would not be Sisyphus,

there were things that I should learn to break.

So free am I, so gloriously free

By Mutta (translated by Uma Chakravarti and Kumkum Roy)

Published in 1991 as part of Women Writing in India: 600 B.C. to the early twentieth century in New York.

So free am I, so gloriously free,

Free from three petty things-

From mortar, from pestle and from my twisted lord,

Freed from rebirth and death I am,

And all that has held me down

Is hurled away.

Cast off all shame

By Janabai (translated by Vilas Sirang)

Published in 1991 as part of Women Writing in India: 600 B.C. to the early twentieth century in New York.

“Cast off all shame,

and sell yourself

in the marketplace;

then alone

can you hope

to reach the Lord.

Cymbals in hand,

a veena upon my shoulder,

I go about;

who dares to stop me?

The pallav of my sari

falls away (A scandal!);

yet will I enter

the crowded marketplace

without a thought.

Jani says, My Lord

I have become a slut

to reach your home.

Pluto Shits on the Universe

By Fatima Asghar

Published in 2015 as a part of Poetry (April 2015) in Chicago.

On February 7, 1979, Pluto crossed over Neptune’s orbit and became the eighth planet from the sun for twenty years. A study in 1988 determined that Pluto’s path of orbit could never be accurately predicted. Labeled as “chaotic,” Pluto was later discredited from planet status in 2006.

Today, I broke your solar system. Oops.
My bad. Your graph said I was supposed
to make a nice little loop around the sun.

Naw.

I chaos like a motherfucker. Ain’t no one can
chart me. All the other planets, they think
I’m annoying. They think I’m an escaped
moon, running free.

Fuck your moon. Fuck your solar system.
Fuck your time. Your year? Your year ain’t
shit but a day to me. I could spend your
whole year turning the winds in my bed. Thinking
about rings and how Jupiter should just pussy
on up and marry me by now. Your day?

That’s an asswipe. A sniffle. Your whole day
is barely the start of my sunset.

My name means hell, bitch. I am hell, bitch. All the cold
you have yet to feel. Chaos like a motherfucker.
And you tried to order me. Called me ninth.
Somewhere in the mess of graphs and math and compass
you tried to make me follow rules. Rules? Fuck your
rules. Neptune, that bitch slow. And I deserve all the sun
I can get, and all the blue-gold sky I want around me.

It is February 7th, 1979 and my skin is more
copper than any sky will ever be. More metal.
Neptune is bitch-sobbing in my rearview,
and I got my running shoes on and all this sky that’s all mine.

Fuck your order. Fuck your time. I realigned the cosmos.
I chaosed all the hell you have yet to feel. Now all your kids
in the classrooms, they confused. All their clocks:
wrong. They don’t even know what the fuck to do.
They gotta memorize new songs and shit. And the other
planets, I fucked their orbits. I shook the sky. Chaos like
a motherfucker.

It is February 7th, 1979. The sky is blue-gold:
the freedom of possibility.

Today, I broke your solar system. Oops. My bad.

Walls

By Marjorie Meeker

Published in 1924 as a part of Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1924 in Boston.

Ask me why I peer
Through such a narrow cranny --
I say that sky from here
Is better than not any.
The walls that shut me in
No mind can make immortal;
My harder will shall win
The yet unthought-of portal.
Ask why I take root
Where nothing green is growing --
I say that seed and shoot
Follow the mad wind's sowing;
But where these live roots turn
And thrust, no wall shall block:
Tendril of frailest fern
Can split a rock.

III. Borders

Brenda Rodriguez and Ruchi Bhutada

The term “borders” often frightens us because it represents the unknown. Being on the other side of the border, or venturing into the unknown, may cause fear due to the lack of familiarity. Once we get over our fear of the unknown, we are able to engage in an expansive view of other worlds, such as countries and cultures. Borders are far more than physical spaces; they encompass time, people, languages, cultures, and perceptions. The following collection of poems reflect on cultural divisions due to the use of borders, and hence preexisting expectations and assumptions of borders are challenged.

The poems included all speak on behalf of cultural differences. However, it is worth noting that Brenda’s selection of poems represents American issues, and Ruchi’s selection of poems represents Indian issues. The collection begins with poems that resemble finite definitions of a border; as they progress, they move into a new perception of borders which highlight humanitarian values and cultural immersion. For example, the first poem, “17 and Where?” written by Moniza Alvi, offers a very one-sided perception of the current border climate between India and Pakistan. This poem makes reference to independence, and it alludes to prominent political leaders including Jinnah, the first Governor-General of Pakistan, and Nehru, the first prime minister of India. In order to fully understand this poem, you must be aware of the historical context and concrete definitions in relation to the partition of India.

On the opposite spectrum, the last poem of the collection introduces a new perception of borders. “Languages,” written by Carl Sandburg, suggests that borders are more than physical boundaries that separate countries. We often associate a language with a particular place, and we make assumptions that a country is limited to merely one language. Through this inaccurate perception, we create assumptions of how individuals should communicate with one another within specific borders. This poem breaks this perception and reiterates that language has no borders. Language is “mountain effluvia moving to valleys and from nation to nation crossing borders and mixing” (Sandburg 8-11). The force of mountain effluvia is unstoppable, just like the change in language cannot be stopped. Similarly to language, the concept of borders is forever fluctuating. It is a very fluid concept in the fact that it means different things to different audiences. Our poem collection stresses the notion that through world literature we can become more aware of concepts that are different from our own values and ideas. Through this literary exposure, readers can learn to show more respect to their neighbors beyond the border.

Cultural differences are accentuated in Linda Sienkiewicz’s poem, “Girls in Tijuana,” by focusing on the “us versus them” narrative. The poem describes the relationship between white tourists and the natives inhabiting the foreign country. In this situation, the natives have the opportunity to benefit, in terms of economic gain, from white people’s cultural immersion experience. At the sight of an American family reaching for change, the Mexican children “appear like pigeons, pleading eyes and dirty firsts scrambling for breadcrumbs” (Sienkiewicz 10-11). In this scene, the cultural difference is made clear as the American family has the time, money, and resources to afford these trips. Meanwhile, the young Mexican children prowl the streets in search of loose change for themselves or their families. When the young American girl interacts with the three-year-old Mexican girl, she states, “she should be in pajamas, a glass or warm milk, watching cartoons, maybe The Little Mermaid, swimming from the ocean into another world” (29-32). This passage presents the expectations of an ideal childhood with very American values, especially with the use of the Little Mermaid. The dominant privileged individual, the white girl, is inflicting her culture upon a minority figure. The words “she should be” enforce the idea that she believes her way is the accurate way, no exceptions.

Our poems also bring light to the complicated concept of managing more than one cultural identity. In Alootook Ipellie’s poem, “Walking Both Sides of an Invisible Border,” he speaks on behalf of the challenge of working with two cultural identities if an individual is living in a region different from their native land. This concept introduced the notion that borders not only separate people, but also cultures. In order to fit in, sometimes the individual has to choose one culture over the other. This gap, or the border, “becomes so wide that I am unable to take another step. My feet being too far apart” (Ipellie 37-39). In order to keep balance, the individual must assimilate and conform to resemble the majority group.

In contrast with assimilation, we also discussed how our anthology brought us to question how borders can connect people. Alberto Rios’ poem, “Border Lines,” argues that borders do not necessarily divide us, they can also connect us. Many individuals view country borders with some hostility, when in reality, they just exist on a paper. If society can learn to modify their perception, then the idea of a border could gradually change. Rios imagines the world as a picture of a cow and also as a jigsaw puzzle, “in a butcher’s shop, all those lines showing where to cut” (Rios 2-3). The action of cutting these lines is a metaphor for how countries have been cut, or divided, into different nations. Yet, in the end, our own perception of these lines and borders is what truly matters. If we can overlook the expectations and assumptions embedded in borders, we can move to a new perception of borders where we no longer feel separated.

One of the greatest inaccurate assumptions of borders, created through social structures and inequalities, is knowing what side of the border an individual would prefer to be a part of. It is often assumed that one country is better than the other, and as a result, all individuals with any logic would choose the “correct” option. In Mayme Miller’s poem, “Night on the border,” this assumption is challenged through the use of the light coming from the Mexican village. The light is symbolic of where the individual desires to be. It is assumed that one would want to live north of the Rio Grande because America promises economic gain and the possible reach for the American dream. However, one might want to live south of the Rio Grande if they prioritize family ties and deep-rooted cultural traditions. American culture is more individualistic, whereas Mexican culture values family a lot more. This poem is representative of our anthology as a whole. It can be described as having concrete-definite, yet humanitarian values. For example, the last two lines of the poem, or the volta, incorporate “nations,” a manmade concept, and “pulse... heart,” a humanistic variable (Miller 27-28).

Mayme Miller uses various literary devices to focus her audience’s attention on specific moments in her poem and emphasize cultural concepts. The poem begins with the phrase “in the,” followed by a noun, and is repeated three more times throughout the poem. The four nouns Miller uses are darkness, stillness, silence, and heavens. The first three nouns create a sense of calmness, yet they illustrate the isolation caused by borders. The last noun, heavens, is the outlier of the four; it is a unifying label. Heaven is a paradise where religiously affiliated individuals desire to one day be united as one. Miller also continually uses personification; for example, she describes “the night winds” calling, the “moon peeped out from its billowy bed,” and the “night wind whispered” (Miller 3, 20, 25). Miller is incorporating nature in her poem because that is ultimately what a border is; it is a distinction between two lands. She includes diction by replacing town with the Spanish translation, “pueblo” (7). The simile, dead leaf “hovering like an eagle at night,” is strategically incorporated to highlight the eagle (8). The eagle is symbolic in both the United States and Mexico for different reasons. In the United States, it represents freedom and independence; the Founding Fathers selected the eagle as the emblem of the country. In Mexico, the eagle on the nation’s flag represents the symbol of colonization. Another example of a simile is, “with clouds like wisteria hanging overhead” (17). Again, Miller makes great use of nature in her literary work. Lastly, “beneath the billowy bed,” is an example of alliteration because three words begin with the same “b” sound (24). Miller’s use of literary devices emphasizes consciousness of emotions. She uses nature and literature to explain the man-made concept of borders in contrast with preexisting humanitarian values.

By assembling this anthology, we learned from these poems that borders are more than physical boundaries that separate countries. We studied the hardships that come with dual cultural identities and fighting assimilation. Not only do borders divide physical spaces, but they also divide people, cultures, and languages. Language and borders are similar because both concepts will always continue to adapt and fluctuate based on human interaction. The poems challenged us to rethink our understanding of the political context within the Indian and Pakistan partition and the Mexican and American border. In order to fully understand the message of these poems, individuals must seek to educate themselves about the historical context of political climates between these countries. It is imperative to realize that individuals experience loss and pain when crossing country borders. The poems in the anthology reveal a latent fear within us. However, we must rise from the shadows of our fears, break the silence, and be open to discussions from across the border.

2013

Moniza Alvi

17 and Where?

From At the time of Partition

Pakistan! the crowd roared.

Pakistan Zindabad! Long live Pakistan!

This country – her country.

A nation in its instability,

one that could change lives

with the suddenness of a blow to the head.

And Jinnah – his photograph was everywhere,

in the newspaper, on crumbling walls.

Jinnah, in his elegant Western-style suit.

As handsome as Nehru, she thought,

but too thin. He was ill –

some said he was dying.

Jinnah who’d had his doubts,

had once striven for unity,

but who now stood supreme,

the Father of the Nation proposing

A state in which we could live and breathe

as free men…

Mohammed Ali Jinnah. And her lost son.

At rest in the afternoon, or on waking

she might picture them both,

one superimposed on the other.

Her country, and the other. The border

tantalizingly close.

At first easy to cross, no passports required.

Then increasingly hard.

The ever-disputed border.

1939

Mayme Garner Miller

Night on the Border

From The North America Book of Verse

In the darkness --

The star-sprinkled darkness,

I heard the night winds call;

In the stillness,

The flower-laden stillness

I heard a dead leaf fall;

While far to the distant pueblo

Hovering like an eagle at night

I glimpsed a yellow lustre --

A mere pin prick of light.

It came from a Mexican village

Across the Rio Grande,

Fanned by a clump of palm trees

Rising from the sand.

In the silence --

The celestial silence --

With clouds like wisteria hanging overhead;

In the heavens,

The star-sown heavens,

The moon peeped out from its billowy bed.

While down among the sheltering ebonies

An earthling marveled anew;

Gazing from nation to nation

Beneath the billowy blue.

Again the night wind whispered.

Its message? -- O come ye apart

And feel the pulse of two nations

Throbbing -- like giant heart!

1999

Tenzin Tsundue

Crossing the Border

From Crossing the Border

Creeping in the nights, hiding in the days,

We reached the snow mountains after twenty nights.

The border was away by several days still.

The rugged terrain withered us to strains.

Over our head a bomber flew,

My children shrieked in fear,

I covered them under my bosom.

Exhaustion tore my limbs apart,

But my mind warned me.

We must go on or die here.

A daughter here, a son there,

A baby on my back,

We reached the snowfields.

Through many monstrous mountains we crawled,

Whose death-blankets often

covered travelers passing by.

In the middle of the white killing fields,

A heap of frozen corpses

Set out weakening spirit trembling.

Blotches of blood spattered the snow.

The army men must have crossed their path.

Our land has fallen to the red dragons.

We prayed the ‘Yishin Norbu’.

With hope in our hearts,

Prayers on our lips,

Hardly anything to eat,

with only ice to quench out thirst,

We crawled for nights together.

Then, one night, my daughter

complained about a burning foot.

She stumbled and rose again on her frost-bitten leg.

Peeled and slashed with deep bloody cuts,

She reeled and writhed in pain.

By the next day both her legs were severed.

Gripped by death all around,

I was a helpless mother.

‘Amala, save my brothers,

I shall rest here for a while’

Till I could no longer see her fading figure,

Till I could no longer hear her fainting wails,

I kept looking back in tears and agony.

My legs carried me, but my spirit remained with her.

Long after in exile, I can still see her

Waving her frost-bitten hands to me.

Eldest home must have been tough for her.

Every night I light a lamp for her,

And her brothers join me in prayer.

1999

Alootook Ipellie

Walking Both Sides of an Invisible Border

From Gathering: The Journal of the First North American Peoples: A Retrospective

It is never easy

Walking with an invisible border

Separating my left and right foot

I feel like an illegitimate child

Forsaken by my parents

At least I can claim innocence

Since I did not ask to come

Into this world

Walking on both sides of this

Invisible border

Each and every day

And for the rest of my life

Is like having been

Sentenced to a torture chamber

Without having committed a crime

Understanding the history of humanity

I am not the least surprised

This is happening to me

A non-entity

During this population explosion

In a minuscule world

I did not ask to be born an Inuk

Nor did I ask to be forced

To learn an alien culture

With an alien language

But I lucked out on fate

Which I am unable to do

I have resorted to fancy dancing

In order to survive each day

No wonder I have earned

The dubious reputation of being

The world’s premier choreographer

Of distinctive dance steps

That allow me to avoid

Potential personal paranoia

On both sides of this invisible border

Sometimes this border becomes so wide

That I am unable to take another step

My feet being too far apart

When my crotch begins to tear apart

I am forced to invent

A brand new dance step

The premier choreographer

Saving the day once more

Destiny acted itself out

Deciding for me where I would come from

And what I would become

So I am left to fend for myself

Walking in two different worlds

Trying my best to make sense

Of two opposing cultures

Which are unable to integrate

Lest they swallow one another whole

Each and every day

Is a fighting day

A war of raw nerves

And to show for my efforts

I have a fair share of wins and losses

When will all this end

This senseless battle

Between my left and right foot

When will the invisible border

Cease to be

2003

Linda Sienkiewicz

Girls in Tijuana

From Rattle

Along Revolución Street, she braids

the white girls' hair, dozens of tidy rows

for $20 a head. Her own daughters, maybe

four, five and six years old, wander

the sidewalks in flopping plastic jellies

and mismatched clothes, stacks of colorful

beaded necklaces hanging over their forearms

to dangle in tourists' faces. An American family

stops and opens their pockets, more

children appear like little pigeons, pleading

eyes and dirty fists scrambling for breadcrumbs.

The American poses her daughter and husband

with the Mexican flock and clicks a camera.

They grin as their mama watches, cross-legged

on the concrete, head wrapped in a gray shawl,

her black eyes narrow glints, a baby tied

on her back; her oldest daughter is a ten year

old nearly past her prime.

They will beg all day.

At the border crossing, eleven p.m.,

under the watch of armed guards:

a three-year-old girl, shy smile, bangs

mopping her large wide eyes, sits alone,

offers packs of tasteless Chícle for quarters.

She'll be out till three or four in the morning,

her parents asleep under a blanket

somewhere. My teenage daughter feeds

her muffins and candy and begs to take

her home: she should be in pajamas,

a glass of warm milk, watching cartoons,

maybe The Little Mermaid, swimming

from the ocean into another world.

2003

Alberto Rios

Border Lines

A weight carried by two

Weighs only half as much.

The world on a map looks like the drawing of a cow

In a butcher's shop, all those lines showing

Where to cut.

That drawing of the cow is also a jigsaw puzzle,

Showing just as much how very well

All the strange parts fit together.

Which way we look at the drawing

Makes all the difference.

We seem to live in a world of maps:

But in truth we live in a world made

Not of paper and ink but of people.

Those lines are our lives. Together,

Let us turn the map until we see clearly:

The border is what joins us,

Not what separates us.

1986

Carl Sandburg

Languages

From Survey of American Poetry

THERE are no handles upon a language

Whereby men take hold of it

And mark it with signs for its remembrance.

It is a river, this language,

Once in a thousand years

Breaking a new course

Changing its way to the ocean.

It is mountain effluvia

Moving to valleys

And from nation to nation

Crossing borders and mixing.

Languages die like rivers.

Words wrapped round your tongue today

And broken to shape of thought

Between your teeth and lips speaking

Now and today

Shall be faded hieroglyphics

Ten thousand years from now.

Sing -- and singing -- remember

Your song dies and changes

And is not here to-morrow

Any more than the wind

Blowing ten thousand years ago.

IV. Borders and Nature

Derrick Ousley and Vincent Eldred

The theme of this anthology is nature, and how it is used as a metaphorical and allegorical lens to view the concept of borders. Each poem therefore possesses a rich theme of nature, whether that be through imagery like that which is shown in “The Sea Once Again”, repetition, which is demonstrated in “Whisper of Liberty”, paradox, such as in “Cedar Bog Baptism”, and juxtaposition, which is found in “The Wild”. The theme of nature in this anthology is defined as anything that contains “natural” diction, whether it be physical things such as rocks, trees, hills, animals, or intangible concepts, such as the senses of sound, perception, or mental processes. With that being said, what makes these poems special is that they go far beyond nature itself, and collectively tell a story about the notion of borders and how they relate, explain, add to or subtract from the human condition and society. As such, the poems have been organized according to their respective categories of physical, social, and mental, in order to help readers better understand the figures of nature and how it is used as a literary device to explain borders, in relation to social barriers, physical boundaries, or mental blocks. While all of these poems can be used to draw conclusions from more than one of the categories mentioned above, it should be noted that the poems were arranged in the way they were because each poem deals particularly well with the specific topic it is assigned to, making it beneficial to the overall theme of the anthology.

For the physical category, two poems have been chosen: “The Sea Once Again”, and “Whisper of Liberty”. The former poem is rich with imagery in the form of physical objects of nature, such as lilacs, geraniums, the voices of birds, “ears of corn walking”, and “stillborn stars”. These material objects elicit a feeling of spring, serenity, and beauty. It is a relatable physical experience to people that the pleasant sounds of birds chirping, the smell of plants and flowers, and the stars at night, and is used to convey the notion that there must be some sort of peace in this fantastical world. However, the poem takes a radical turn with the interjection at line seven, “Children are being killed in Gaza.” Suddenly, the paradox of the poem is crystallized: the natural objects of beauty, which stand on their own at face value, have a voice that can bear witness to the horrors of war concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict surrounding the Gaza Strip, which shows both an actual physical conflict, and concerns a real border. There is an irony between natural beauty in a given area, juxtaposed with the horrors of war over physical borders which occupies that same space and time. The second poem, “Whisper of Liberty”, also deals with the physical side of nature, in a similar manner. Natural sensory images are also used, in the form of an insect’s wing, for example. However, a natural force is also used, in the form of sound: “A line curls from voice to ear” (1). Interestingly, the poem repeats part of the first line in the third line, to provide an abrupt turn in the poem: a curling line suddenly means a border between “love and anything but [...love…]’. This border, like the other poem, is a physical border, described as a “slap on a map” (3).

The second category that has been chosen is the “mental” category, which contains four poems. In “The Wild”, lots of detailed imagery involving nature is used, such as the ladybug, hands cupping water “like a supplicant” (3-4), and “lush and shaggy” used to describe a lawn after a rainfall (6-7). Here, nature is used by the poet to provide an internal reflection between itself as an exterior, separate entity, and the way society may treat it either as an instrument or a nuisance: “[...the leaves…] says rake me out of sight” (11). The poem eventually reveals a clear contrast between where society/humanity begins, and where “the wild” begins: “...it marks the border...beyond which the wild begins” (14-5). In the poem R72, likewise, an internal reflection is demonstrated through the poet’s observations of his “foreignness” (23) in contrast with a rambunctious party traveling through the countryside via automobile. This contrast is created through detailed and sensory diction, such as “two girls wearing sunglasses” (6), “cigarette embers jumping” (8), “rattled into road works” (11), “spitting stones” (14) and the speaker himself, creating a conscious border between the doer and the observer. For “Directions”, the individual theme itself is survivalistic, and tells a personal narrative resembling a coming of age story, changing midway to a more somber tone: “But nobody in our troop knew the jungle...or the tiger bite of sandstorm...in the run from the border up to Baghdad” (5-7). Indeed, the poet speaks of forestry and combating the elements, but the contrast set up between youthful harmlessness and the future hardships of more relentless environments creates a border itself. Lastly, “Asphyxiation” can help explain how natural borders, “rivers” (1,4) help readers realize their own internal borders. Since the “sheep” and the speaker do not know what is beyond the river (1-3, 12-3), it causes them to stare and wonder. They are rendered ignorant because they have never seen this area before, and are forced to make their own conclusions: “Maybe very vast, that river” (3-4).

Finally, the third category contains poems dealing primarily with the “social” element. Four poems have been selected. In “Self Portrait as Sonoran Desert”, the main point of interest to this category is the imagery conveyed by “bone and clay” (8-9) used to show the idea of a social prison, or “detention center”, which acts as a border met to divide humanity rather than bring it together: “This border… is not a stitch...This border is a wound … (16-17). For “Deep Lane: We Began to Think the White Fish Individual”, this is an example of a microcosm of human conflict and suffering, as well as borders. The “white fish individual” (1) itself is a personification, as if a fish could be a human. This fish is a “four-inch emperor” (5), the master of his little world (koi pond), after a heron took away his mate (4). He himself is not safe or tranquil even if he has his own body of water surrounded by natural borders, as eventually an unforeseeable force, outside his control, comes in (again in the form of a heron) to take his life away too. Another poem here, “Languages”, provides noteworthy commentary on language through the use of nature, and argues that it is fluid; “it is a river” (4), “breaking a new course” (6)”, and is owned by no single entity: “from nation to nation...crossing borders and mixing” (10-1). This poem deals differently with borders, by arguing that there are none with regards to language. The last poem in this category is “Cedar Bog Baptism”, which, like the preceding poems, discusses the concept of alienation and two separate worlds being divided by a border. In this case, the worlds being divided are that of the conformity and impulse. The conformity aspect is seen in how the “three boys” did not listen or heed the advice of the speaker, as if they were expected to adhere to it in the first place (3). The impulse comes from the boys themselves, who regardless of the warnings of the speaker, thrust themselves into the “shadowed side” of the pond (6). The poem, which is rich with images of nature, shows the outcome of what may happen when one does not conform to wisdom, in a rather dark and gloomy way: “They vanished, swallowed up…Later I saw them come out, pale-faced, with blackened hands and arms…” (5-6).

From working with these poems, we learned that through human interaction with nature, we reveal truths about ourselves when faced with borders whether that be physical, mental, or social. These truths, however, don’t necessarily affect the reader only. The poems speak about natural borders on physical places, mentalities (when experiencing new areas that we are unprepared for), and societal norms affect people in nature. The more we interact with nature, the more we reveal about our human condition. Thus, revealing how our human condition is constructed when encountering borders throughout nature.

The social aspect teaches us what happens when we have borders that we are told not to cross especially in nature. In the poem, “Cedar Bog Baptism”, the author of the poem is observing the actions of the other boys as they venture to “shadowed side” after not conforming to what others had told them (6). Their ignorance of others calls causes them to be “swallowed up” then after awhile they are seen again as “pale-faced/with blackened hands and arms” (8-9). The implication here is that we become something unpleasant and not ourselves when we steer away from others because we do not want to conform. The border here between what we need to do vs. what we want to do shows is strongly illustrated in this poem. The border is the lake separating those that listen from those that do not. The author knows that if they did not listen, the boys would become something other than themselves remembering how “I warned them. I warned them” (11). Adding on to this point, we learn what happens when humans try to harness things that they cannot control. From the poem “Languages”, we learn that language is like “rivers” and “mountains” because it occurs naturally (4, 8). Just as all natural things they fade with time and new things are created. We learned that we should treat language as something that naturally occurs because it “shall be faded hieroglyphics” and new languages will form (17). Instead of trying to harness language creating borders between ourselves, we should let language run it course like something natural because it will eventually die out.

From analyzing the mental portion of the poetry section, we learn that we cannot prepare ourselves for what we will face in the world, but when we try to understand the unknown, we will be astonished by it. From the poem “Directions”, we see that mentally preparing ourselves for the future is hard, even if you are physically prepared. The border that is created here is the border between mental and physical strength. The author says “we always had a lesson on survival when lost in the woods” however, “nobody in our troop knew the jungle, the desert” (1, 5). The author and the group were physically prepared, but they did not have the mental preparations because they have never experienced it. When we try to gain perspectives on these new experiences, we are getting stuck on what could be out there rather than what is out there.

In “Asphyxiation”, the sheep stare at “where I think that river goes” and it causes the humans in the poem to constantly wonder where the river goes because “no one has seen for certain” (13, 3). The connection between these poems is that we learn that we cannot mentally prepare ourselves for harsh experiences when it comes to nature. On the other hand though when we do try to prepare ourselves, we leave ourselves left full of wonder for what’s out there. The only thing that we can do is wonder because we have never experienced it.

The poem that represents the entirety of the anthology would be “The Wild”, which is categorized under the mental section. Even though it is placed in this section, the poem represents more than just our mentality. “The Wild” poses many exaggerated images that could seem like the wild because it is outside in nature. “The Wild” talks of a steep “red mountains” made of leaves in the speaker's backyard, and a “ladybug” flying around (12, 1). Though this may be seen as wild because they occur in nature theses images, do not represent the wild. It is a very domesticated view of nature providing consistent images of what we think “the wild” is based on basic interactions with nature. While we may think this small interaction with nature is the wild but there is a border between what humans think nature is and what true nature/”the wild” is. This poem established a clear border between humanity and nature, telling readers that where society ends, “the wild begins.” We have the strong interaction with nature that benefits, making us want to explore it more. It poses the question “when one of us will break from the confines of our lawn,” it makes the reader think of how much nature there is outside of our confined ideas of nature (6, 15). Adding to this, it makes one want to explore and interact with nature to find out what humans are missing; helping us to see what is out there, so we do not foolishly imagine. This poem also reminds us of the peskiness of nature and that nature is not always there to be intuned with us. It sets up the necessary boundary that is needed between human culture and nature, providing just enough interaction to give insight to our curiosity. It also leaves enough space where we can recognize our differences between nature and humanity.

Poem Arrangement

Physical

The Sea Again

Translated from Turkish by Ken Fifer and Nesrin Eruysal

One by one the sea's candelabra are lit The city lights up as evening sets in The scent of geraniums fills the downtown balconies Walks across the public market Just around the corner out of the blue Pessoa
If you like you can let the lilac speak Of the Middle East and its stillborn stars Its night and its moon walk into the sea Fed up with being quarantined
I'm not surprised by a passionate horizon The bird's voice on my fingertips The ears of corn walking down to the shore Or my eyes burning with love
If you like you can let the lilac speak Of dawn and the mysterious ocean Children are being killed in Gaza
The lilac's voice is wet with blood

Ada, Ahmet. "The Sea Once Again." The Literary Review, vol. 55, no. 2, 2012, p. 178. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A298854653/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=41467c1f. Accessed 8 Apr. 2018

Whisper of Liberty

A line curls from voice to ear. Haze on a harbor sings then clears.
An insect wing makes a creepy satin swish on skin, and you hear it.
A line curls between love and anything but: a slap on a map
as a border shuts. Miniaturely military, a tiny cavalry yanks on one end
so the line recoils before it recalls its other end can curl to a wing.
Its wish? Not to knot as a necktie but be a lace for a shoe running past.

Peacock, Molly. "Whisper of Liberty." Southwest Review, vol. 100, no. 1, 2015, p. 119. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A407796414/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=70c67414. Accessed 8 Apr. 2018.

Mental

The Wild

The buzzing of a ladybug above the bathroom mirror sounds like a
   small plane considering a landing on my head, bowed toward the
   executioner's block--the sink. My hands cup water like a
   supplicant, asking for a stay of despair as my eyes, salty green as
   the olives our daughter adores, question the hour when one of us
   will break from the confines of our lawn, lush and shaggy from fall
   rains, and kick through the sad confetti of fallen leaves, which
   shimmered gold and promise-like on the massive maple--as old as our
   country--before dropping in a luminous pool around it. Downright
   heraldic. Now those leaves cast about like a wizened nuisance and
   their sunkenness says rake me out of sight behind the barn and keep
   trudging upward--up the steep base of Red Mountain, rising behind
   our house, past the denuded birches to the bear tree, clawed until
   it snapped twenty feet up. Quiet and violent it marks the border--
   beyond which the wild begins.

Cook, Justine. "The Wild." Southwest Review, vol. 99, no. 2, 2014, p. 227. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A367421227/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=7bded51f. Accessed 8 Apr. 2018.

R72

I crossed die border to sand
   along the road edge and
   number plates coloured
   by elephants, aloes,
   a yellow car ahead
   with two girls wearing sunglasses
   Sometimes 1 saw the side
   of a nose, cigarette embers jumping
   out along the gravel. Steering
   straight into the sea until
   they rattled into road works and
   stuck out elbows in still heat
   They drove through potholes, revved
   past trucks spitting stones
   i would find them again, a little bit
   along, turning heads with chatter
   bare shoulders
   in the sun, then veered
   into a dust track
   towards some tangled coast
   but to me they kept on travelling
   the yellow car capturing a life just
   ahead. My foreignness framed in
   the rear view mirror

Tennant, Megan. "R72." New Coin Poetry, vol. 48, no. 1, 2012, p. 48. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A363190178/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=965fb046. Accessed 8 Apr. 2018.

Directions

In my scouting days, we always had a lesson on survival when lost in the woods.
We starred our way to true north from the erring needle of the compass. We measured the height of a tree from an angle drawn between a pencil's length and thumb and forefinger stretched ninety degrees.
But nobody in our troop knew the jungle, the desert, or how to stay the course when the green lid of a sarcophagus closed around them at Khe Sanh or the tiger bite of a sandstorm pierced their blue-blocker eyegear in the run from the border up into Baghdad.

Rossi, David. "Directions." Prairie Schooner, vol. 82, no. 4, 2008, p. 150. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A190789257/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=8d303ee3. Accessed 8 Apr. 2018.

Asphyxiation

Do you know there's a river there?

Behind that dark fir forest?

No one has seen for certain? Maybe

very fast, that river. Dark in the daytime.

Our border against the natives. Eyes, just

flat eyes, and a sound of spitting wavelets.

Oh, Lindsey. Don't make me wish you

well. The morning appeared like an old

and unused god--fur matted in places--and

ground me up. And the sheep

have climbed the low stone barn

and won't come down, just stare

that direction, where I think that river goes.

Source Citation (MLA 8^th Edition)

Brodak, Molly. "Asphyxiation." Crazyhorse, no. 85, 2014, p. 53. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A382256144/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=55e57ead. Accessed 8 Apr. 2018.

Societal

Self Portrait as Sonoran Desert

She walks across my chest--
                                           dragging her shadow & fraying
                                                     [All the edges]. My nipples bloom // into cacti--
                             Fruit & flower. She eats // then I do.
     --A needle pricks her. I have only seen this woman // cry once--
                                         Squeezed // like a raincloud. She cried because // two white men. [Two white men]
                               Built a detention center--
                                            From bone & clay. [The first bone--my clavicle]. The second--her spine. She howls
                                            [As the fence // surrounds her]. She coughs & Combs // the floor // my chest
                         [Shiv-shivering]. Inside the detention center--
                                       [She is named] "immigrant" "illegal."
                                                       She loses 15 pounds & Mental health & her feet are--
                  Cracked tiles // dirty dishes. This border--                          is not a stitch [where nations meet]. This border is a wound //                                where nations part.

Soto, Christopher. "Self Portrait as Sonoran Desert." The American Poetry Review, Jan.-Feb. 2016, p. 37. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A439251785/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=f76c3ace. Accessed 8 Apr. 2018.

Deep Lane: We Began to Think the White Fish Individual.

We began to think the white fish individual --the one of the pair who'd struggled, after all, when our pond's colder water shocked and he lay pulsing in the shallows till we thought him all but gone, then simply drew himself up, if that were something a fish could do, and swam away. A heron ate his mate. He seemed, all the more then, singular He surfaced in March, after his first season entombed in bottom-mud, unscathed, a four inch emperor in his white silk coat, insignia of the kingdom splashed over his back the color of candied orange rind. He'd nose up out of the lily-murk when our shadows crossed his borders, push to the edge to open the translucent white ring of his mouth over and over as if begging ... As if! Seems to want, seems to feel. But as we knew him semblance fell away: We felt the presence of the soul of him, if soul could be understood as specificity, so that when he himself was swallowed --white appetite perched on the roof, bill raised to the air, throat unrelenting-- the absence in the pond grew resonant, a sort of empty ringing. Where were the details then, the gestures that had marked him? How can I take any pleasure in this garden?

Doty, Mark. "Deep Lane: We Began to Think the White Fish Individual." The American Poetry Review, May-June 2011, p. 5+. LitFinder. Accessed 8 Apr. 2018.

Languages

THERE are no handles upon a language

Whereby men take hold of it

And mark it with signs for its remembrance.

It is a river, this language,

Once in a thousand years

Breaking a new course

Changing its way to the ocean.

It is mountain effluvia

Moving to valleys

And from nation to nation

Crossing borders and mixing.

Languages die like rivers.

Words wrapped round your tongue today

And broken to shape of thought

Between your teeth and lips speaking

Now and today

Shall be faded hieroglyphics

Ten thousand years from now.

Sing -- and singing -- remember

Your song dies and changes

And is not here to-morrow

Any more than the wind

Blowing ten thousand years ago.

Sandburg, Carl. "Languages." Survey of American Poetry, vol. 7: Poetic Renaissance, Roth Publishing, 1986. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/LTF0000600594WK/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=eac43886. Accessed 8 Mar. 2018.

Cedar Bog Baptism

Text:

Tell me. What did you see?
                      I saw the summer pond eye-lashed with its willows, the swallows that dipped and broke
                      the calm of the blind eye's sleep. I saw three boys. They did not hear me call. They approached
                     the pond's shadowed side, the dark border with the cedar swamp. They were not listening.
                        Not listening. They vanished Swallowed up. Later I saw them come out,
                 pale-faced, with blackened hands and arms, the stench of cedar bog rot, and a large animal's black-stained
                           bones. I warned them. I warned them.

Source Citation (MLA 8^th Edition)

Osler, Richard. "Cedar Bog Baptism." Antigonish Review, no. 158, 2009, p. 72. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A214103423/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=f2a3eb76. Accessed 8 Apr. 2018.

V. Beyond the Border: A Journey of Self-Discovery

Sakshi Rathod and Ankitha Kammaje

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the noun “border” as “a line separating two countries, administrative divisions, or other areas.” We initially began working on the anthology with the idea of territorial borders in an effort to bring light to various reasons people have been brought to navigate through them. However, it soon dawned upon us that these poems were more than just mere examples of shifts between borders around the world. They were personal stories. We looked at how migrations beyond border shaped their experiences and how they perceived it. Each piece of poetry came with its own assortment of inner conflicts faced by these immigrants. Here, our anthology will discover these inner conflicts within people various origins as they struggle to define their own cultural identity and dialogue as a result of the borders placed upon them.

The compilation starts as we retrace the steps of those who first crossed these borders, the first-generation immigrants, starting with Glenn Shaheen’s “Israel.” Here, Shaheen depicts his narrative as an Israeli immigrant and states that he has “become / a better driver by the standards of Houston” (3-4), implying that his proficiency as an American is already lacking because he fails to meet the true standard of simple tasks like driving in his present home. The poem also emphasizes the isolation as an immigrant as felt by his incompetence through the last six lines, in which he writes:

It's all true, I am weak. Give me a nation

to hate, to love, to touch and trust the borders of.

Come here, entreat me--inside of you, on you,

what difference does it make. Nobody to call

and nobody who would come out. Come forth,

fond wrench, and do something different to me. (22-27)

These lines follow a series of requests or commands such as “give me,” “come here,” “entreat me,” and “come forth,” suggesting a tone of urgency that underscores Shaheen’s need to assimilate in a country that he can “trust the borders of.” Similarly, Polish poet Tomasz Różycki expands on how borders work to create a dissociation felt by both immigrants and natives, in his poem “Electric Eels.” He begins with the declaration, “These are our colonies!” (1) to illustrate the narrative of someone whose people have been forcefully detached from their homeland in the pre-colonial African kingdom of Kuba. Through this exclamation, he incites an aggressive and bitter attitude in regards to those who have taken over his land. In Kuba, foreigners “take natives and the lake, fish, crayfish, known / and unknown species” (6-8) in a pattern that is similar to that of most African countries, whose natural resources were taken and pillaged by the Europeans. However, the subject goes back to his kingdom to find out that he, the native, has instead become the immigrant or foreigner when he finds “bottle caps, / glass, fish spines, charcoal, cartons all unglued / and deeper-rags, pins, hair inside the earth” (12-14) as physical reminders of his home being taken away from his. Furthermore, the title “Electric Eels” perhaps serves as a reference to barbed wires in which the subject is closed off from his own country, just as how any other border, may serve to keep people out from not only their physical territories but also their sense of nationalities as well.

Our theme is further carried out well into the second part of the anthology which describes borders in a typical second-generation immigrant’s perspective. While most first-generation immigrants face a plethora of obstacles as they cross borders, the struggle to fit in and resolve the ambiguity of their own cultural identity passes on to their children and grandchildren, as indicated by Hasheemah Afaneh’s “Remember My Name.” Afeneh depicts this ambiguity as she states, “My name is a refugee / From Haiffa, Acre, and Jaffa / But I have no idea what these places are like” (1) and places herself in the miscellaneous category as she appears to be set aside as merely a “refugee.” The poem’s purpose serves to indicate an internal border that one may face as they come across the uncertainty of where they truly belong in the world. However, our subject is resolved to answer this question but knows it will be difficult when she says, “But I won’t be naive / To think someone will take me back” (46-47). She knows that the difficulty in finding her place beyond actual physical borders may be present no matter where she goes.

Lastly, our poems shift from the personal to an omniscient perspective that portrays the lives of other groups of people from the past: people who have also trekked through borders and somehow lost themselves along the way. For example, Frank Ormsby’s “The Willow Forest” recounts the effects borders have on one’s own struggle to maintain their dignity as he writes, “Survivors who reached the borders became refugees” (6). Although the people have faced a number of mass executions, they are stripped from their own identities as they lose their status as “survivors” of many hardships, to just mere “refugees” fleeing their country. Anupama Raju’s “On Borders” perceives the border in an objective sense as the poet attempts to separate himself from his memories while he looks at the transient nature of borders. The reflection is in reference to both territorial borders as well as internal borders within an individual. This emotion is depicted in the lines, “Glass windows or walls/Never see them until late. / Fragility lies” (13-15), implying that certain boundaries are put in between us and our actual selves like glass windows or walls.

As we have taken a look at poems which illustrate the internal borders between immigrants and their actual identities, we come across three main points. Firstly, immigrants who are oftentimes left to fend for themselves face newer and more difficult challenges to justify their place among the people they live with. This can be seen in Alootook Ipellie’s “Walking Both Sides of an Invisible Border,” in which he narrates his struggles as an Inuk living in America. The first lines, “It is never easy / Walking with an invisible border / Separating my left and right foot” (1-3) describe Ipellie’s struggles to balance both cultures and find his place among them. He also states that he is “forced to invent / a brand new dance step.../ saving the day once more” (41-44), indicating that he feels the need to balance his left foot, in reference to his Inuk culture, with his right, his American culture, to completely invent a new “dance” or sense of being. Another insight the anthology offers is that borders may sometimes often serve as aching reminders for the pain and suffering immigrants such as refugees carry within themselves. This notion is highlighted in the poem “Fragments” by Bunkong Tuon, in which he talks about his childhood and the conflict him and his family suffered near the Thailand-Cambodia border. The poem is split into three phases: the first depicting his loss and anguish as a boy who has lost his loved ones at the cost of war, the second portraying his time at the refugee camp, and the third detailing his present life with his fiancé in New York. Through these phases, we see a transition in Tuon’s life from living in a war-torn area to finding love and settling in an upstate apartment in the sprawling metropolis. Although his physical scenario and lifestyle changes dramatically, his fears stay the same as he “[rests], eyes closed, sweating” (46) while he watches the fireworks lighting the New York sky. The poem’s purpose shows the reader the effect physical borders inflicted upon others, has on the current mental state of an immigrant and may sometimes lead to trauma. Finally, the third and most significant insight is drawn when looking at Imtiaz Dharker’s “Minority.” She states:

“I don’t fit,

Like a clumsily-translated poem;

Like food cooked in milk of coconut

Where you expect ghee or cream.” (13-16)

Here, Dharkar reveals the typical life and perspective of an immigrant born of mixed heritage and the alienation one may feel due to his or her own cultural ambiguity. She does this by employing imagery as she dwells upon food and language to define herself among others. However, the poem takes a shift in the last stanza by switching from first-person point of view to second person. By doing this, Dharkar is able to extend the subject’s current situation towards the reader as she can “recognize [them] as [his] own” (50). Therefore, it is safe to say that the reader as well as everyone else, at any point in time, has been made to feel like they are a minority.

At last, we now understand how territorial borders have often served as figurative barriers between the lives of immigrants and their inner identity through dialogue, culture, and ancestral roots. One poem that is wholly representative of this idea is “Crossing Borders” by Mahtem Shiferraw, in which he brings light to the patterns of refugee migrations around the world. The subjects in this poem have been “given new names, new / sounds… / told new stories that this somehow / still do not belong to [them],” (9-11) as an indication of their roots being taken away from them when they flee their burning houses. In their attempt to assimilate, they have become hosts to a new identity: one they do not feel comfortable to have and only assists to remind them of how truly out of place they are in their new homes. The repetition of “yellow daisies” and “acacia tree” in stanzas two and eight symbolizes that the refugees’ escape from place to place is merely a continuous process they must become accustomed to.

Through this anthology we have attempted to offer the reader a perception of the struggles of an immigrant and the inner conflicts they may face. Borders do not merely depict the territorial borders that are drawn between two states. More often than not, they reflect their restrictive nature by drawing barriers between a person’s desires to assimilate, fit in, and find a voice or identity that is solely theirs.

Israel

-Glenn Shaheen

Steam lifting from the highways, ascending

to the heavens beneath the misery of commute,

fires below the pavement. I have become

a better driver by the standards of Houston.

I will hurt somebody if they deserve to be hurt.

No, OK, no, but I'm an expert in menace. All

this blinding steel and glass, we've made

the world a brighter place. They tell me Israel

is a great problem. I don't care. They tell me

it is our final hope. The world is a maze of

definitions and borders, problems, signs painted

in an array of colors scientifically chosen to

arrest the vision. Israel is a place that rolls

from the tongue. There are no enemies unless

you make it so, unless you inch menacingly

over the paint. The album is criticized for its

lack of structure, for the singer's refusal to

repeat herself. Hold me, hold me, the heater

is broken, cars are being pulled over outside.

Adults are in the park, groping casually over

glasses of wine they're not supposed to have.

It's all true, I am weak. Give me a nation

to hate, to love, to touch and trust the borders of.

Come here, entreat me--inside of you, on you,

what difference does it make. Nobody to call

and nobody who would come out. Come forth,

fond wrench, and do something different to me.

Shaheen, Glenn. "Israel." Ploughshares, vol. 38, no. 1, 2012, p. 148+. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A285887798/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=86aae302. Accessed 27 Mar. 2018

Electric Eels

-Tomasz Rosycki

Translated from Polish by Mira Rosenthal

These are our colonies! With sticks and stones

Kuba has staked them out, except for borders,

because they spread across the summer.

For them we've traveled the entire land

in an awkward posture. And now we will

announce it to the world, as witnesses

take natives and the lake, fish, crayfish, known

and unknown species. We will hang a flag

stuck on a stick into the sand. The space

our bodies fill will be its province till

the morning, till the time when others come.

We find their traces in the sand: bottle caps,

glass, fish spines, charcoal, cartons all unglued,

and deeper-rags, pins, hair inside the earth.

Rozycki, Tomasz. "10. Electric Eels." The Literary Review, vol. 52, no. 1, 2008, p. 16. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A198475632/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=04801adc. Accessed 27 Mar. 2018

Crossing Borders

-Mahtem Shifferaw

When we leave our homes,

someone has set them on fire

though our eyes are trained to see

this no longer. Instead, this house,

we say, is filled with yellow daisies,

and its backyard houses the acacia tree

mother planted years ago.

We are given new names, new

sounds for our sorrows. We are

told new stories that somehow

still do not belong to us.

When we cross the borders we hope one of us will make it

though we know one won't.

Conversations are brief

and chopped; ordinary things

fill our mouths, washing the

sour taste of bleeding things.

The lands that grow beneath

our feet are on fire too, and here

we see ourselves reflected back.

The lines that separate us are many,

and many more we follow, or

hold, or hide until we see each other again

in our sleeping, we become yellow daisies

and mother the acacia tree housing us all.

Shiferraw, Mahtem. "Crossing Borders." Prairie Schooner, vol. 91, no. 4, 2017, p. 35+. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A521048450/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=8a891ec2. Accessed 27 Mar. 2018.

Walking Both Sides of an Invisible Border

-Alootook Ipellie

It is never easy

Walking with an invisible border

Separating my left and right foot

I feel like an illegitimate child

Forsaken by my parents

At least I can claim innocence

Since I did not ask to come

Into this world

Walking on both sides of this

Invisible border

Each and every day

And for the rest of my life

Is like having been

Sentenced to a torture chamber

Without having committed a crime

Understanding the history of humanity

I am not the least surprised

This is happening to me

A non-entity

During this population explosion

In a minuscule world

I did not ask to be born an Inuk

Nor did I ask to be forced

To learn an alien culture

With an alien language

But I lucked out on fate

Which I am unable to do

I have resorted to fancy dancing

In order to survive each day

No wonder I have earned

The dubious reputation of being

The world’s premier choreographer

Of distinctive dance steps

That allow me to avoid

Potential personal paranoia

On both sides of this invisible border

Sometimes this border becomes so wide

That I am unable to take another step

My feet being too far apart

When my crotch begins to tear apart

I am forced to invent

A brand new dance step

The premier choreographer

Saving the day once more

Destiny acted itself out

Deciding for me where I would come from

And what I would become

So I am left to fend for myself

Walking in two different worlds

Trying my best to make sense

Of two opposing cultures

Which are unable to integrate

Lest they swallow one another whole

Each and every day

Is a fighting day

A war of raw nerves

And to show for my efforts

I have a fair share of wins and losses

When will all this end

This senseless battle

Between my left and right foot

When will the invisible border

Cease to be

Alootook Ipellie, "Walking Both Sides of an Invisible Border," from Gathering: The En’owkin Journal of First North American Peoples: A Retrospective. Copyright © 1999 by Alootook Ipellie. Reprinted by permission of the Estate of Alootook Ipellie.

Source: An Anthology of Canadian Native Literature in English, 4th ed. (Oxford University Press, 2013)

Fragments

-Bunkong Tuon

Nothing is like the smell of singed skin

meshed with burning metal in the evening wind.

The boy and his grandmother are crouching

in a ditch as the rocket whistles,

randomly selecting its victims.

The night sky is lit like fireworks,

the earth smells of burnt skin.

Mothers cry for their children.

The boy clutches his grandmother's body.

Bodies fall, parts scatter, dispersing

pieces of someone--a neighbor, a friend, and aunt, maybe.

Another round illuminates the darkening sky,

and then there is the silence and the trembling,

and the urine and the crying.

The boy asks, "Where is mother?"

The jungle is silent.

The world stands still.

But the whistling continues.

The boy awakens

from a nightmare.

The bomb, a firebird,

spreads its wings.

The boy is panting,

sweat dampens the earth.

Somewhere in this mist and fog,

outside the UN refugee camp,

a woman howls.

And the boy

thinks about his mother

III

In our apartment, in upstate New York,

we watch fireworks from our living room window.

The college where we teach is celebrating--an

evening of togetherness, where aging alumni

and retired professors meet under that boom-boom sound.

I sit back on the futon

trying to rest, eyes closed, sweating.

My fiance looks out the window,

"There is something about fireworks."

She says to me, "Something

about it that appeals to everyone."

Tuon, Bunkong. "Fragments." War, Literature & The Arts, vol. 25, no. 1, 2013. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A353320687/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=cb137af4. Accessed 27 Mar. 2018.

Remember My Name

-Hasheemah Afaneh

My name is a refugee

From Haifa, Acre, and Jaffa,

But I have no idea

What these places are like.

My grandparents told me,

You chased them out of there

With an airstrike.

I don’t remember your

orange trees.

I’ve never put a toe in your

Beautiful sea.

I have never even entered

My own home,

So for it,

I dedicate this poem.

My grandmother holds the

House key.

To go back home is her plea.

My grandfather remembers

Every bit.

Before his voice starts shaking,

He bites his lip.

They no longer live in the

House they built.

They wonder if the people that took it

Feel an ounce of guilt.

As for us,

We became a statistic,

In one of those “resolution plans”

That is a book thick.

And although I have lived

Nowhere else,

I feel like I could’ve been

Someone else.

But my name,

Since 1948,

Is a refugee

That doesn’t want to hate.

When my grandparents are gone,

They’ll leave me their key

That they so desperately hold

On,

And I’ll be here

Searching for an identity,

Something that isn’t an entity.

But I won’t be naïve

To think someone will take me back.

All I want is for someone to remember my name.

So will you remember my name?

Afaneh, Hasheemah. “Poems of the Diaspora.” Warscapes, Warscapes, 21 Apr. 2017, www.warscapes.com/poetry/poems-diaspora.

Minority

- Imtiaz Dharker

I was born a foreigner.

I carried on from there

To become a foreigner everywhere

I went, even in the place

Planted with my relatives,

Six-foot tubers sprouting roots,

Their fingers and faces pushing up

New shoots of maize and sugarcane.

All kinds of places and groups

Of people who have an admirable

History would, almost certainly,

Distance themselves from me.

I don’t fit,

Like a clumsily-translated poem;

Like food cooked in milk of coconut

Where you expected ghee or cream,

The unexpected aftertaste

Of cardamom or neem.

There’s always that point where

The language flips

Into an unfamiliar taste;

Where words tumble over

A cunning tripwire on the tongue;

Where the frame slips,

The reception of an image

Not quite tuned, ghost-outlined,

That signals, in their midst,

An alien.

And so, I scratch, scratch

Through the night, at this

Growing scab of black on white.

Everyone has the right

To infiltrate a piece of paper.

A page doesn’t fight back.

And, who knows, these lines

May scratch their way

Into your head—

Through all the chatter of community,

Family, clattering spoons,

Children being fed—

Immigrate into your bed,

Squat in your home,

And in a corner, eat your bread,

Until, one day, you meet

The stranger sidling down your street,

Realize you know the face

Simplified to bone,

Look into its outcast eyes

And recognize it as your own.

Dharker, Imtiaz. “Minority” Nine Indian Women Poets, edited by Eunice DeSouza, Oxford University Press, 2005, 58-59

The Willow Forest

-Frank Ormsby

What with the pogroms, the genocide,

the ethnic cleansing, the secret massacres,

the mass graves, the death camps, the public executions,

at last there was nobody left,

the country was empty.

Survivors who reached the borders became refugees.

Rebuked by that silence beyond the mountains,

the victors planted willows and in due course

the country grew into a willow forest.

The trees hung their heads

over a history that, now memorialized,

could be forgotten.

Except that the few who visited

spoke of a weight

that was more than gravity,

a wind in the trees

that stilled to a kind of weeping.

Ormsby, Frank. "The Willow Forest." Ploughshares, vol. 41, no. 1, 2015, p. 153. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A409699249/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=3cf00bdb. Accessed 27 Mar. 2018.

On borders

-Anupama Raju

Borders are like smiles:

Deceptive, transient lines,

sliding into lies.

Like the grains of sand

in distant deserts: flying

with winds. Homeless.

Like the songs of love

they once sang to each other:

Memories of pain.

Borders are like dreams.

Creeping into dark bed folds.

Real, not real enough.

Glass windows or walls

Never see them until late.

Fragility lies.

Like spluttering streetlights

that live and die instantly.

Undependable.

Or like marriages,

devotion, dedication:

Conditions apply.

But not like shadows:

Alive at noon, dead at night.

They don’t disappear

Raju, Anupama. “Four Poems: The Time-Eater, On Borders, The Memory Maker And Nightless Night.” The Caravan, The Caravan, 1 Nov. 2012, www.caravanmagazine.in/reporting-and-essays/four-poems

Battle-line

-Imtiaz Dharker

Did you expect dignity?

All you see is bodies

Crumpled carelessly, and thrown

Away.

The arms and legs are never arranged

Heroically.

It’s the same with lovers

After the battle-lines are drawn:

Combatants thrown

Into something they have not

Had time to understand.

And in the end, just

A reflex turning away

When there is nothing, really,

Left to say;

When the body becomes a territory

Shifting across uneasy sheets;

When you retreat behind

The borderline of skin.

Turning, turning,

Barbed wire sinking in.

These two countries lie

Hunched against each other

Distrustful lovers

Who have fought bitterly

And turned their backs;

But in sleep, drifted slowly

In, moulding themselves

Around the cracks

To fit together,

Whole again; at peace.

Forgetful of hostilities

Until, in the quiet dawn,

The next attack

Checkpoint:

The place in the throat

Where words are halted,

Not allowed to pass,

Where questions form

And are not asked.

Checkpoint:

The space on the skin

That the other cannot touch;

Where you are the guard

At every post

Holding a deadly host

Of secrets in.

Checkpoint:

Another country. You.

Your skin the bright, sharp line

That I must travel to.

I watch his back,

And from my distance map

Its breadth and strength.

His muscles tense.

His body tightens

Into a posture of defence.

He goes out, comes in.

His movements are angles

Sharp enough to slice my skin.

He cuts across the room—

His territory. I watch

The cautious way he turns his head.

He throws back the sheet. At last

His eyes met mine.

Together,

We have reached the battle-line;

Having come home,

All you can do is leave.

Spaces become too small.

Doors and windows begin

To hold your breath.

Floors shift underfoot, you bruise yourself

Against a sudden wall.

You come into a room;

Strangers haggle over trivial things—

A grey hair curls in a comb.

Someone tugs sadly at your sleeve.

But no one screams.

Because, leaving home,

You call yourself free.

Because, behind you,

Where you once

Had planted a tree.

Dharker, Imtiaz. “Battle-line” Nine Indian Women Poets, edited by Eunice DeSouza, Oxford University Press, 2005, 51-53

VI. Fringe

Navya Shivahare, Gauri Srinivas, Daniella Moeller

FRINGE.

~Gauri Srinivas

The theme of “borders” is so vast that, unless specified, chances are everyone would have a different interpretation of the theme. Some would think of borders in the literal sense; such as borders that signify a country’s boundary. Another interpretation of the theme could be barriers instead of literal borders. Barriers that stop people from living a certain kind of life, barriers that stop people from doing what they love, barriers that limit communication with other individuals barring the ones who understand you, barriers that limit human beings from being treated like human beings. In accordance with this very interpretation, one section of our anthology focuses on poems which talk about a certain kind of barrier the poet faced in their lifetime, and how they either overcame it, and/or learnt to deal with it. For this section, a little bit of inspiration had struck because of reading Marwa Helal’s poetry, especially after interviewing her for another course, it became evident that she and her family have had to struggle quite a bit before actually settling down. She has had to face a lot of criticism, been through a lot of trauma, and chose her career path as a journalist because she did not want other people’s stories getting lost as hers did in the long run. A lot of the poets in this list have had to face similar struggles, be it barriers regarding their language, their race, their identity, sexual or otherwise, and so on. This section is an ode to those poets whose lives inspire people living in the same conditions, and can help provide them the means of getting through it without having to hurt themselves.

Poem to be Read from Right to Left

~Marwa Helal.

language first my learned i

second

see see

for mistaken am I native

go I everywhere

*moon and sun to

ل letter the like

lamb like sound

fox like think but

recurring this of me reminds

chased being dream

circle a in

duck duck like

goose

no were there but children other

of tired got i

number the counting

words English of

two takes it

in 1 capture

another

*شمسية و قمرية

This poem is written in a form called the Arabic, invented by the poet, wherein the poem is supposed to be read like the Arabic script itself is; from right to left. Only if read in this sequence will the poem make sense, but if read from left to right, it vehemently rejects you.

Chen [No Middle Name] Chen

~Chen Chen, 2016.

(poem made entirely from letters in the title)

Called Chad called Mini

Called homo and maám

Called no man called Chinaman

Am I a man?

One man called me Hannah

Then mad claimed I had

A mom ‘do and needed

A hand.

Call me mean call me

Coal I am mad

Ammo I am alchemical

I am.

Chen middle name ocean middle name

Dahlia middle name nomad eel-dance loam.

Gate A4.

-Naomi Shihab Nye.

(speaker/scenario poem)

Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning my flight had been delayed four hours, I heard an announcement: “If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.” Well— one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.

An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing. “Help,” said the flight agent. “Talk to her . What is her problem? We told her the flight was going to be late and she did this.”

I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke haltingly. “Shu-dow-a, shu-bid-uck, habibti? Stani schway, min fadlick, shu-bit-se-wee?” The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the next day. I said, “No, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just late, who is picking you up? Let’s call him.”

We called her son, I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her? This all took up two hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life, patting my knee, answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies— little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts— from her bag and was offering them to all the women at the gate. To my amazement, not a single traveler declined one. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the lovely woman from Laredo— we were all covered with the same powdered sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.

Then the airline broke out free apple juice and two little girls from our flight ran around serving it and they were covered with powdered sugar too. And I noticed my new best friend— by now we were holding hands— had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought, This is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that gate— once the crying of confusion stopped— seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too.

This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.

Skinhead.

-Patricia Smith, 2002.

(speaker poem)

They call me skinhead, and I got my own beauty.
It is knife-scrawled across my back in sore, jagged letters,
it’s in the way my eyes snap away from the obvious.
I sit in my dim matchbox,
on the edge of a bed tousled with my ragged smell,
slide razors across my hair,
count how many ways
I can bring blood closer to the surface of my skin.
These are the duties of the righteous,
the ways of the anointed.

The face that moves in my mirror is huge and pockmarked,
scraped pink and brilliant, apple-cheeked,
I am filled with my own spit.
Two years ago, a machine that slices leather
sucked in my hand and held it,
whacking off three fingers at the root.
I didn’t feel nothing till I looked down
and saw one of them on the floor
next to my boot heel,
and I ain’t worked since then.

I sit here and watch niggers take over my TV set,
walking like kings up and down the sidewalks in my head,
walking like their fat black mamas named them freedom.
My shoulders tell me that ain’t right.
So I move out into the sun
where my beauty makes them lower their heads,
or into the night
with a lead pipe up my sleeve,
a razor tucked in my boot.
I was born to make things right.

It’s easy now to move my big body into shadows,
to move from a place where there was nothing
into the stark circle of a streetlight,
the pipe raised up high over my head.
It’s a kick to watch their eyes get big,
round and gleaming like cartoon jungle boys,
right in that second when they know
the pipe’s gonna come down, and I got this thing
I like to say, listen to this, I like to say
“Hey, nigger, Abe Lincoln’s been dead a long time.”

I get hard listening to their skin burst.
I was born to make things right.

Then this newspaper guy comes around,
seems I was a little sloppy kicking some fag’s ass
and he opened his hole and screamed about it.
This reporter finds me curled up in my bed,
those TV flashes licking my face clean.
Same ol’ shit.
Ain’t got no job, the coloreds and spics got ’em all.
Why ain’t I working? Look at my hand, asshole.
No, I ain’t part of no organized group,
I’m just a white boy who loves his race,
fighting for a pure country.
Sometimes it’s just me. Sometimes three. Sometimes 30.
AIDS will take care of the faggots,
then it’s gon’ be white on black in the streets.
Then there’ll be three million.
I tell him that.

So he writes it up
and I come off looking like some kind of freak,
like I’m Hitler himself. I ain’t that lucky,
but I got my own beauty.
It is in my steel-toed boots,
in the hard corners of my shaved head.

I look in the mirror and hold up my mangled hand,
only the baby finger left, sticking straight up,
I know it’s the wrong goddamned finger,
but fuck you all anyway.
I’m riding the top rung of the perfect race,
my face scraped pink and brilliant.
I’m your baby, America, your boy,
drunk on my own spit, I am goddamned fuckin’ beautiful.

And I was born

and raised

right here.

Postcard From Kashmir.

-Agha Shahid Ali, date unknown.

Kashmir shrinks into my mailbox,

my home a neat four by six inches.

I always loved neatness. Now I hold

the half-inch Himalayas in my hand.

This is home. And this the closest

I'll ever be to home. When I return,

the colors won't be so brilliant,

the Jhelum's waters so clean,

so ultramarine. My love

so overexposed.

And my memory will be a little

out of focus, in it

a giant negative, black

and white, still undeveloped.

The poet here talks about receiving a postcard from their native land of Kashmir. The fact that parts of Kashmir’s territory are controlled by India and Pakistan, and the disputes between the two nations are longstanding, makes the poet wonder when she can go home, and reminisces about the life she had while she was a little girl.

Mondo Bizarro

-Navya Shivahare

“What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust.”

-Salvador Dali

The second section of this anthology will focus on the very fine and versatile, sometimes even blurred boundaries between reality and a dream-like state of mind. Man tends to cross these fluid borders to escape his seemingly superfluous and mundane life. He does so by fantasizing, dreaming and altering his state of consciousness. When he crosses over to this kaleidoscopic state of mind, he reaches a place where he is no longer constrained by the laws of the physical and natural world which then gives way to him being possessed by a sense of abundant and unleashed curiosity. These seemingly mystical boundaries have continued to intrigue people from all walks of life- from artists and poets to neurologists- so much so that Herculean efforts have been made throughout the ages to try and comprehend the very nature of these boundaries and the bizarre worlds that people tend to cross over to. The form of poetry best suited to actually comprehend the nature of this fantastical phenomenon is the Surrealist poetry that stems from the Surrealism movement of the mid-1920s- a revolutionary movement that rejected rationalism and realism and sought to unearth the true potential and powers of the enigmatic subconscious mind. Surrealists believed that they could do so by repressing rationality and letting their subconscious imagination unravel freely on paper. André Breton, a French critic and poet wrote The Surrealist Manifesto (1924) which marked the literary establishment of Surrealism as an intellectual and literary movement. In his remarkable publication, he stated that poetry should not be filtered by rational thought and that poets should let their raw, unfiltered and vivid thoughts flow on paper. This technique was called Automatism and Breton believed that in essence, Surrealism was “pure psychic automatism.” (Voorhies, J). The poems that have been featured in this section of the anthology capture the ethos of Surrealist poetry and the movement as a whole. They do so by encapsulating the nature of the aforementioned boundaries between reality and a dream-like state of mind and furthermore describing these extraordinary worlds that reside in man’s subconscious minds.

Salvador Dalí

David Gascoyne
1936

The face of the precipice is black with lovers;
The sun above them is a bag of nails; the spring's
First rivers hide among their hair.
Goliath plunges his hand into the poisoned well
And bows his head and feels my feet walk through his brain.
The children chasing butterflies turn round and see him there
With his hand in the well and my body growing from his head,
And are afraid. They drop their nets and walk into the wall like smoke.

The smooth plain with its mirrors listens to the cliff
Like a basilisk eating flowers.
And the children, lost in the shadows of the catacombs,
Call to the mirrors for help:
'Strong-bow of salt, cutlass of memory,
Write on my map the name of every river.'

A flock of banners fight their way through the telescoped forest
And fly away like birds towards the sound of roasting meat.
Sand falls into the boiling rivers through the telescopes' mouths
And forms clear drops of acid with petals of whirling flame.
Heraldic animals wade through the asphyxia of planets,
Butterflies burst from their skins and grow long tongues like plants,
The plants play games with a suit of mail like a cloud.

Mirrors write Goliath's name upon my forehead,
While the children are killed in the smoke of the catacombs
And lovers float down from the cliffs like rain.

The Manless Society

Pierre Unik

Date unknown

Morning trickles over the bruised vegetables
like a drop of sweat over the lines of my hand
I crawl over the ground
with stem and wrinkled mouth
the sun swells into the canals of monstrous leaves
which recover cemeteries harbours houses
with the same sticky green zeal
then with disturbing intensity there passes through my mind
the absurdity of human groupings
in these lines of closely packed houses
like the pores of the skin
in the poignant void of terrestrial space
I hear the crying of birds of whom it used to be said
that they sang and implacable resembled stones
I see flocks of houses munching the pith of the air
factories which sing as birds once sang
roads which lose themselves in harvests of salt
pieces of sky which become dry on verdigris moss
a pulley's creaking tells us that a bucket rises in a well
it is full of limpid blood
which evaporates in the sun
nothing else will trouble this circuit on the ground
until evening
which trembles under the form of an immense pinned butterfly
at the entrance of a motionless station.

Postman Cheval

André Breton

1932

We are the birds always charmed by you from the top of these belvederes
And that each night form a blossoming branch between your shoulders and the arms of your well beloved wheelbarrow
Which we tear out swifter than sparks at your wrist
We are the sighs of the glass statue that raises itself on its elbow when man sleeps
And shining holes appear in his bed
Holes through which stags with coral antlers can be seen in a glade
And naked women at the bottom of a mine
You remembered then you got up you got out of the train
Without glancing at the locomotive attacked by immense barometric roots
Complaining about its murdered boilers in the virgin forest
Its funnels smoking jacinths and moulting blue snakes
Then we went on, plants subject to metamorphosis
Each night making signs that man may understand
While his house collapses and he stands amazed before the singular packing-cases
Sought after by his bed with the corridor and the staircase
The staircase goes on without end
It leads to a millstone door it enlarges suddenly in a public square
It is made of the backs of swans with a spreading wing for banisters
It turns inside out as though it were going to bite itself
But no, it is content at the sound of our feet to open all its steps like drawers
Drawers of bread drawers of wine drawers of soap drawers of ice drawers of stairs
Drawers of flesh with handsfull of hair
Without turning round you seized the trowel with which breasts are made
We smiled at you you held us round the waist
And we took the positions of your pleasure
Motionless under our lids for ever as woman delights to see man
After having made love.

Making Feet and Hands

Benjamin Péret

1934

Eye standing up eye lying down eye sitting

Why wander about between two hedges made of stair-rails while the ladders become soft
as new-born babes
as zouaves who lose their homeland with their shoes
Why raise one's arms towards the sky since the sky
has drowned itself without rhyme or reason
to pass the time and make its moustaches grow
Why does my eye sit down before going to bed
because saddles are making donkeys sore
and pencils break in the most unpredictable fashion
the whole time
except on stormy days
when they break into zigzags
and snowy days
when they tear their sweaters to pieces
But the spectacles the old tarnished spectacles
sing songs while gathering grass for cats
The cats follow the procession
carrying flags
flags and ensigns
The fish's tail crossing a beating heart
the throat regularly rising and falling to imitate the sea surrounding it
and the fish revolving about a ventilator
There are also hands
long white hands with nails of fresh greenery
and finger-joints of dew
swaying eyelashes looking at butterflies
saddened because the day made a mistake on the stairs
There are also sexes fresh as running water
which leap up and down in the valley
because they are touched by the sun
They have no beards but they have clear eyes
and they chase dragonflies
without caring what people will say

Sliding Trombone

Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes

Date unknown

I have a little windmill on my head
Which draws up water to my mouth and eyes
When I am hungry or moved to tears
I have a little horn full of the odour of absinth in my ears
And on my nose a green parakeet that flaps its wings
And cries 'Aux Armes'
When from the sky fall the seeds of the sun
The absence from the heart of steel
At the bottom of the boneless and stagnant realities
Is partial to crazy sea-fish
I am the captain and the alsatian at the cinema
I have in my belly a little agricultural machine
That reaps and binds electric flex
The cocoanuts thrown by the melancholy monkey
Fall like spittle into the water
Where they blossom again as petunias
I have in my stomach an ocarina and I have virginal faith
I feed my poet on the feet of a pianist
Whose teeth are even and uneven
And sad Sunday evenings
I throw my morganatic dreams
To the loving turtle-doves who laugh like hell.

Section by Daniela Moeller:

What transcends borders? What makes one’s experience with borders different? Is it the language one speaks? Is it a willingness to share culture, ideas, food? Is it money, class, race, gender, ethnicity, nationality or other forms of identity? Each of these poems shares an idea of what a border means and represents, with each idea heavily influenced by the various poets’ intersecting identities. The anthology attempts to show how different life experiences and circumstances shape the borders that one encounters throughout life.

The anthology begins with two poems that center around the US-Mexico border. The first describes the border as “not a stitch where nations meet, this border is a wound where nations part.” The author, Christopher Soto, describes himself as a queer, latinx poet and prison abolitionist. He advocates for homeless queer youth, and has stated in an interview “I don’t have a home in a physical property. I’m not sure that I ever did.” His intersecting marginalized identities and familiarity with the injustices of the prison and detention center system in the United States inform the sentiments expressed in his poem. His interpretation of immigration detention centers are that they are built off the the profit of the bodies that they detain, the bodies of people like him. “Two white men built a detention center--from bone & clay. [The first bone--my clavicle]. The second--her spine.” His interpretation of a border is therefore a wound, a place where violence happens.

The second poem continues this idea of the border as a space for violence, only this time it highlights the fact that this violence can be circumvented depending on social class. The violence of the US-Mexico border-crossing experience is described, but the people in the poem can circumvent the violence of the harsh desert environment for 250 pesos as they “bring jugs full of water and pose for selfies”. They view it as an experience that they can laugh about, “knowing a bullet will never wound them.” The poem describes the luxury of knowing that a truck will be there to pick them up and take them safely back to their hotel rooms if they get lost. It ends by saying “I have so much water left in my jug”, something that would never happen for migrants actually having to make the dangerous journey. Many die from running out of water or having to drink unclean water from old cattle tanks. The author, Natalie Scenters-Zapico, grew up on the El Paso and Ciudad Juarez border, and witnessed the human rights issues at the border first-hand. Here she uses her frustration with people who romanticize or trivialize the plight of migrants to give meaning to her poetry. She utilizes her lived experiences to make a point about the violence of border spaces.

“Partition of Hearts”, the third poem in the collection, was written by Moniza Alvi, a woman with a Pakistani father and a British mother. Her poem attempts to show the loss that people undergo when borders are created due to conflict (in this case, in the Pakistan-India border region). The poem tries to say that it doesn’t matter who is blamed--politicians, nations, leaders--when conflict triumphs and man-made borders rise up as a result, the people are the ones who suffer.

The subsequent three poems are connected because they focus specifically on borders created or dissolved by language. The first and second illustrate the struggle of learning a new language after crossing a border as a refugee or immigrant. “Lessons”, written by Jennifer Freed, an ESL teacher, brings to light her experiences working with people who have crossed borders and have such a depth of stories to tell, but they lack the language to tell the stories. She is able to convey the emotions that people feel, even when they lack the English words to impart them in their new culture. “and you would struggle to produce the English sounds

that held the meanings you still held inside your head: the dappled murmuring of leaves outside your childhood home, the trees full of sweet yellow fruit you could not name in this new life, the lives you left so you could live”. The poem does a great job of showing that borders and barriers created by a lack of shared language can be crossed through the sharing of human emotion and experience. Carl Sandburg’s poem, “Languages” is a great follow-up to these two poems, as it illustrates the fact that “there are no handles upon a language whereby men take hold of it”, and that languages are also “Moving to valleys And from nation to nation Crossing borders and mixing.” Despite what man may do, or how much violence or separation man may create in border regions, things like languages and ideas cannot be stopped. They are universal possessions of mankind that cannot be held back by borders.

The final poem ties this set of the anthology together because it addresses current events (the Syrian refugee crisis), and the fact that regardless of borders and distance, international conflict affects us all. “Here is the island of O’ahu, 8,500 miles from Syria. But what if Pacific trade winds suddenly became helicopters? Flames, nails, and shrapnel indiscriminately barreling towards us?” The author, Craig Santos Perez, originally from Guam, uses his experiences with immigration and colonialism continuing to affect nations to inform his poetry. His experiences as a father also lead the writing in his poem to end with hope and the call for a solution. “But am I strong enough to carry her across the razor wires of sovereign borders and ethnic hatred? ….To all the parents who brave the crossing: you and your children matter. I hope your love will teach the nations that emit the most carbon and violence that they should, instead, remit the most compassion.”

SELF PORTRAIT AS SONORAN DESERT

She walks across my chest—

dragging her shadow & fraying

[All the edges].

My nipples bloom // into cacti—

Fruit & flower.

She eats // then I do.

—A needle pricks her.

I have only seen this woman // cry once—

Squeezed // like a raincloud.

She cried because // two white men.

[Two white men]

Built a detention center—

From bone & clay.

[The first bone— my clavicle]. The second— her spine.

She howls

[As the fence // surrounds her].

She coughs &

Combs // the floor // my chest

[Shiv-shivering].

Inside the detention center—

[She is named] “immigrant” “illegal.”

She loses 15 pounds &

Mental health & her feet are—

Cracked tiles // dirty dishes.

This border— is not a stitch [where nations meet].

This border is a wound // where nations part.

Border Crossing Simulation

For 250 pesos, or 12.00 USD, you can experience a simulation

of a border crossing in Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo, México.

The chairos from Mexico City travel by bus for an hour,

arrive at Parque EcoAlberto. They’ve come to walk all night

in the desert in the middle of México to simulate a border

crossing. They bring jugs filled with water & pose for selfies.

The journalists expose la caminata

nocturna, not as a training ground for crossing

the border, one thousand miles away from here,

but as a piece of performance art.

The desert here is no desert at all & I think of how I could cut a

thick-barreled cactus open & eat it.

In Chihuahua I’ve never seen thick-barreled cacti, only the thin long

threads of ocotillo that don’t carry much water.

Part of the simulation is not knowing your coyote’s real name. Part

of the simulation is knowing your group could leave you behind.

Part of the simulation is knowing that if you are left behind, a

pickup truck will take you back to your hotel.

Through caves, through brush, through needles

we form a line by holding on to a stranger’s backpack. In the dark live

rounds are fired. I duck & people laugh knowing a bullet will never

wound them.

When you wade across the river you only have to worry about

swimming if a current pulls you under, not the red glare of night

vision goggles, flood lights, & guns that would kill you without ever

asking your name.

In the simulation, only two people make it to the other side without

getting stopped by actors portraying la migra or narcos.

All are brought back in pickup trucks to return to their hotels for

cups of atole. It’s three in the morning, a girl laughs.

We sing mexicanos al grito de guerra. I walk back

to my room, turn on the light, & the flying ants won’t stop swarming.

It is so dark & I have so much water left in my jug. My teeth full of

grit from the atole.

Scenters-Zapico, Natalie. "Border Crossing Simulation." Boulevard, Fall 2017, p. 168+. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A504785083/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=ace5824e. Accessed 14 Apr. 2018.

Partition of Hearts

They called it the Partition of Hearts,

this dark side of Independence.

Blame the British, blame Congress,

blame Nehru, blame Jinnah.

But what was the point?

They called it the Partition of Hearts.

Yet connections had not been broken,

not quite -

between Pakistan and India

the living and the dead

the families and the missing

the people and themselves.

They called it the Partition of Hearts -

this Partition of reinforced glass.

Alvi, Moniza. "Partition of Hearts." Atlanta Review, vol. 20, no. 2, 2014, p. 28. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A366730855/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=286390e5. Accessed 14 Apr. 2018.

Lessons

If you were that woman, sitting

every Friday in the public library, one week working

through the who and how and why

of simple questions whispering from your tutor’s lips,

the next week learning price and pay and sale and save

and How much does it cost?--

if you were that woman,

then you, too,

would ask for repetition of bag and back and bank,

of leave and leaf and left and live,

and you would struggle to produce the English sounds

that held the meanings you still held

inside your head: the dappled murmuring of leaves

outside your childhood home, the trees

full of sweet yellow fruit you could not name in this new life,

the lives you left so you could live,

and as you moved your lips in all the unfamiliar ways

to make the sounds your tutor made, she would nod

and you would smile, but you would never

write, for you’d not yet know how

to form or read those fast, firm letters you watched pouring from her hand,

and so you’d have no way to store what you had learned

except in memory and hope,

alongside memories of why you’d never needed written words

in your native world, where your mother had taught you all the skills

of planting and harvesting and weaving and singing that you would ever need

for living in a lush, good place,

and alongside memories

of gunfire echoing beyond the trees,

of rebels begging for or stealing food,

of soldiers from some distant city standing in your

village, barking about loyalty

and able-bodied men,

and then the memories

of jungle paths for five long nights,

of sharing food and whispered hope with others who had dared

to flee,

and the memories of the daughter and the son, both

born and grown high as your eye in the refugee camp on the border.

The English words would nestle in amidst

all this,

get lost, be found again, and you would have to try

to pull them out but leave the rest behind, try

to let the new sounds tell you

not only the hard-edged names and places

of this brick and concrete life,

but also how to live in it:

how to take

a city bus, how to

pay for

light,

and you would sit again, again, again

in a mauve chair at a round table in the library,

amidst the shelves and worlds

of words,

struggling with your who and how and why,

and you would not allow yourself

to figure how much it had cost

or how much you still had to pay.

You would just smile and thank your tutor,

and come back

next Friday.

Freed, Jennifer. "Lessons." The Worcester Review, vol. 34, no. 1-2, 2013, p. 172+. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A393099880/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=5546dbaa. Accessed 14 Apr. 2018.

My tongue is divided into two

My tongue is divided into two

by virtue, coincidence or heaven

words jumping out of my mouth

stepping on each other

enjoying being a voice for the message

expecting conclusions

My tongue is divided into two

into heavy accent bits of confusion

into miracles and accidents

saying things that hurt the heart

drowning in a language that lives, jumps, translates

My tongue is divided by nature

by our crazy desire to triumph and conquer

This tongue is cut up into equal pieces

one wants to curse and sing out loud

the other one simply wants to ask for water

My tongue is divided into two

one side likes to party

the other one takes refuge in praying

tongue

english of the funny sounds

tongue

funny sounds in english

tongue

sounds funny in english

tongue

in funny english sounds

My tongue sometimes acts like two

and it goes crazy

not knowing which side should be speaking

which side translating

My tongue is divided into two

a border patrol runs through the middle

frisking words

asking for proper identification

checking for pronunciation

My tongue is divided into two

I like my tongue

it says what feels right

I like my tongue

it says what feels right

Aviles, Quique. “My tongue is divided into two.” The Immigrant Museum, Rain Coast Books, 2004. Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53006/-my-tongue-is-divided-into-two. Accessed 15 Apr. 2018.

Languages

THERE are no handles upon a language

Whereby men take hold of it

And mark it with signs for its remembrance.

It is a river, this language,

Once in a thousand years

Breaking a new course

Changing its way to the ocean.

It is mountain effluvia

Moving to valleys

And from nation to nation

Crossing borders and mixing.

Languages die like rivers.

Words wrapped round your tongue today

And broken to shape of thought

Between your teeth and lips speaking

Now and today

Shall be faded hieroglyphics

Ten thousand years from now.

Sing—and singing—remember

Your song dies and changes

And is not here to-morrow

Any more than the wind

Blowing ten thousand years ago.

Care

My 16-month old daughter wakes from her nap

and cries. I pick her up, press her against my chest

and rub her back until my palm warms

like an old family quilt. “Daddy’s here, daddy’s here,”

I whisper. Here is the island of Oʻahu, 8,500 miles

from Syria. But what if Pacific trade winds suddenly

became helicopters? Flames, nails, and shrapnel

indiscriminately barreling towards us? What if shadows

cast against our windows aren’t plumeria

tree branches, but soldiers and terrorists marching

in heat? Would we reach the desperate boats of

the Mediterranean in time? If we did, could I straighten

my legs into a mast, balanced against the pull and drift

of the current? “Daddy’s here, daddy’s here,” I

whisper. But am I strong enough to carry her across

the razor wires of sovereign borders and ethnic

hatred? Am I strong enough to plead: “please, help

us, please, just let us pass, please, we aren’t

suicide bombs.” Am I strong enough to keep walking

even after my feet crack like Halaby pepper fields after

five years of drought, after this drought of humanity.

Trains and buses rock back and forth to detention centers.

Yet what if we didn’t make landfall? What if here

capsized? Could you inflate your body into a buoy

to hold your child above rising waters? “Daddy’s

here, daddy’s here,” I whisper. Drowning is

the last lullaby of the sea. I lay my daughter

onto bed, her breath finally as calm as low tide.

To all the parents who brave the crossing: you and your

children matter. I hope your love will teach the nations

that emit the most carbon and violence that they should,

instead, remit the most compassion. I hope, soon,

the only difference between a legal refugee and

an illegal migrant will be how willing

we are to open our homes, offer refuge, and

carry each other towards the horizon of care.

Perez, Craig Santos. “Care.” Poem-A-Day, The Academy of American Poets, 2016. https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/care. Accessed 14 Apr. 2018.

Bibliography

Section I- Fringe

Poem to be read from right to left:

http://www.wintertangerine.com/helal-poem-to-be-read/

Chen [no middle name] Chen:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BEFG79Hvxss/

Gate A4:

https://gratefulness.org/resource/gate-4-a-immigration-hope-tears/

Skinhead:

http://www.bu.edu/agni/poetry/print/2002/56-smithp.html

Section II- Mondo Bizarro

Title from- Ramones. Mondo Bizarro. Radioactive Records, 1992

Voorhies, James. "“Surrealism.” In Heilbrunn Timeline Of Art History.." Metmuseum.org. N.p., 2004.

Salvador Dali:

https://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/david-gascoyne/salvador-dali/

The Manless Society:

https://cakeordeathsite.wordpress.com/2016/10/01/the-manless-society/

Postman Cheval:

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/postman-cheval/

Making Feet and Hands:

https://allpoetry.com/Making-Feet-And-Hands

Sliding Trombone:

http://www.modernistmagazines.com/media/pdf/265.pdf

VI. Crossing the Unknown

Shafrarisi Bonner and Divyameenakshi Thiagarajan

The word “border” varies from definition to definition. According to the Oxford Dictionary, a border is defined as “a line separating two countries, administrative divisions, or other areas”, “form an edge along or beside (something)”, and the like. Many of these definitions focus mainly on the physical aspect of borders. It is usually related to countries, but never to people and the physical or mental borders that they come across, those that can develop from a life altering experience and can produce physical effects. This collection of poems illustrates and includes experiences ranging from immigration to language, education to age. Each poem in its own way weaves a tale that becomes more inclusive of all sorts people. Through the creation and ordering of this anthology, we hope to potentially break down the educational borders that we may unknowingly have. This poetry collection includes poems from individuals who have walked different paths in their lifetime.

Borders are omnipresent, and come in various shapes and sizes. Physical barriers separating people or places, border lines drawn around states and nations, language-based divisions, divisions of class or caste, clashes of thought or opinion, differences in culture and appearance, the line between reality and fantasy, or even the crossing point from life to death – all of these are, in one way or another, borders. Through the compilation of the poems in this anthology, we will attempt to demonstrate what we perceive when we think of “borders”, in terms of one’s identity as an individual, an immigrant, an explorer. Our idea is that of a trip of sorts: a journey through borders, a journey that starts off as a collection of thoughts, and with time evolves into what borders mean to people today – their identity.

The anthology opens with “The Border: A Double Sonnet” written by Alberto Ríos, as an insight into the numerous possibilities of how one can interpret “borders”. One’s journey through divisions would begin with the perception of the very existence of those divisions, and this poem depicts a kind of beginning almost impeccably. We then progress into Stephen Spender’s work, “An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum.” It directly refers to the barrier of class divide – between the rich and privileged, and the slum-dwellers who dream of being a part of the picturesque landscapes of the world they only see through maps and literature. The children’s hope of crossing the boundaries of their classroom, of reaching beyond the windows that enclose them, is what the next step in their journey becomes.

Robyn Rowland’s narrator in “Merging in Kas” embodies the creation of a longing for the other side – a mixing of identities can be observed when she says:

…Turkish words repeating around my English limits, both languages broken on my tongue now.
But small satchels of sound, words, are unnecessary inside the flow of mind, borders lost in a cobalt sea you think simply can't be a border, tides unfettered, its trysts with cloud free of barriers…

It is perhaps at this point where a questioning of the border’s existence begins. The thoughts of what lies across the barrier lead to a doubt in the reason for the building of such a wall in two parallel lines of thought: one seen through Mona Nicole Sfeir’s point of view, and the other demonstrated by Robert Frost.

Sfeir accuses the wall of being built as a validation of violence – “Build a wall and continue to bomb.” In her view, the makers of these divisions use them to hide from accountability for their actions against those on the opposite side. Frost, on the other hand, speaks of the futility of the wall between him and his neighbour:

There where it is we do not need the wall:
            He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
            My apple trees will never get across
            And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
            He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."

The inquisitive line of thought is taken a step forward in the journey of borders, through “Crossing” by Natalie Scenters-Zapico. She depicts the adventure of a couple crossing the border of Mexico into the US – a crossing of borders to test the waters, to see what would happen if one were to disregard the consequences of traversing a forbidden barrier. One may fail – as does the man in Kevin Prufer’s “Immigration” – or eventually succeed in reaching out from their enclosure into what lies on the other side – as in the case of “The Pilgrim Maiden” of Dorothy Whitehead Hough. Hough shows the determination of a traveller to make her destination, her own, through conquering and adaptation.

Adaptation brings the explorer to a point of multiplicity of identity, which is analogised by Joseph O. Legaspi in “Amphibians” through a simple yet vivid equalisation of immigrants and amphibians. It is once the integration of identity is achieved, when one begins to accept their home, their borderless yet divided existence as invisible people, depicted in Mahtem Shiferraw’s “Nomenclatures of Invisibility”. The journey does not end here though; it only transitions into self-acceptance and unification of a world that seems so deeply entrenched in its separations.

“Crossing the Unknown” is the title of our poetry collection, and through it we hope to depict a venturing into borders, an exploration that could lead one to their unknown emotions. These poems share knowledge of journeys to new lives, languages that are not of the native tongue, and constant fears of being stopped by officials. Despite being written by several different authors and during eras, our definition of border was present throughout. A border is, in our opinion, a physical, emotional, and literal boundary that individuals create and cross. Throughout this journey, individuals have experienced joy, sorry, anguish, fear, and relief. These powerful emotions are some of what we hope to expose through the making of this collection.

The motive of our anthology is to perhaps initiate an expansion of our horizons, to explore ourselves and our boundaries. Hopefully through reading and analyzing these poems, our audience is able to realize the strength within them and their own boundaries. It hopes to serve as a pillar of strength, as well as a reminder of the heroes within us all. This anthology is meant to depict a journey – the journey of the poets, the characters, and the readers, through the various stages of awareness, acceptance and action revolving around the divisions of class, thought, imagination, maps, and emotions.

The Border: A Double Sonnet

ALBERTO RÍOS || Ríos, Alberto. The Border: A Double Sonnet. New Labor Forum, vol. 26, no. 2, 2017, pp. 124. SAGE Journals, doi: 10.1177/1095796017700595.

The border is a line that birds cannot see.

The border is a beautiful piece of paper folded carelessly in half.

The border is where flint first met steel, starting a century of fires.

The border is a belt that is too tight, holding things up but making it hard to breathe.

The border is a rusted hinge that does not bend.

The border is the blood clot in the river’s vein.

The border says stop to the wind, but the wind speaks another language, and keeps going.

The border is a brand, the “Double-X” of barbed wire scarred into the skin of so many.

The border has always been a welcome stopping place but is now a stop sign, always red.

The border is a jump rope still there even after the game is finished.

The border is a real crack in an imaginary dam.

The border used to be an actual place, but now, it is the act of a thousand imaginations.

The border, the word border, sounds like order, but in this place they do not rhyme.

The border is a handshake that becomes a squeezing contest.

The border smells like cars at noon and wood smoke in the evening.

The border is the place between the two pages in a book where the spine is bent too far.

The border is two men in love with the same woman.

The border is an equation in search of an equals sign.

The border is the location of the factory where lightning and thunder are made.

The border is “NoNo” The Clown, who can’t make anyone laugh.

The border is a locked door that has been promoted.

The border is a moat but without a castle on either side.

The border has become Checkpoint Chale.

The border is a place of plans constantly broken and repaired and broken.

The border is mighty, but even the parting of the seas created a path, not a barrier.

The border is a big, neat, clean, clear black line on a map that does not exist.

The border is the line in new bifocals: below, small things get bigger; above, nothing changes.

The border is a skunk with a white line down its back.

An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum

STEPHEN SPENDER || Spender, Stephen. Selected Poems. Random House, 1964. Print.

Far far from gusty waves these children's faces.

Like rootless weeds, the hair torn round their pallor:

The tall girl with her weighed-down head. The paper-

seeming boy, with rat's eyes. The stunted, unlucky heir

Of twisted bones, reciting a father's gnarled disease,

His lesson, from his desk. At back of the dim class

One unnoted, sweet and young. His eyes live in a dream

Of squirrel's game, in tree room, other than this.

On sour cream walls, donations. Shakespeare's head,

Cloudless at dawn, civilized dome riding all cities.

Belled, flowery, Tyrolese valley. Open-handed map

Awarding the world its world. And yet, for these

Children, these windows, not this map, their world,

Where all their future's painted with a fog,

A narrow street sealed in with a lead sky

Far far from rivers, capes, and stars of words.

Surely, Shakespeare is wicked, the map a bad example.

With ships and sun and love tempting them to steal —

For lives that slyly turn in their cramped holes

From fog to endless night? On their slag heap, these children

Wear skins peeped through by bones and spectacles of steel

With mended glass, like bottle bits on stones.

All of their time and space are foggy slum.

So blot their maps with slums as big as doom.

Unless, governor, inspector, visitor,

This map becomes their window and these windows

That shut upon their lives like catacombs,

Break O break open till they break the town

And show the children to green fields, and make their world

Run azure on gold sands, and let their tongues

Run naked into books the white and green leaves open

History theirs whose language is the sun.

Merging in Kas

ROBYN ROWLAND || Rowland, Robyn. "Merging in Kas." Antipodes, vol. 26, no. 2, 2012, p. 172. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A317204495/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=455451fa

Taurus mountains rise high behind. Settled between their stone feet and the blue bowl of bay, Kas sits waiting for the impact of the summer swell. This moment it is coming into its warmth yet spring still holds onto the wildflowers, skin purple with it on the mountains between olive trees.

Nights are chill but the moon chooses--silver or gold--full for three nights spilling itself across the black-blue lap of ripples adorning rocks below our windows as the lights of Greece on the island of Megisti whisper flickering across the ripples.

Floating in the Mediterranean between history's tug and pull, a total solar eclipse was "fully visible" three years ago from its loop of blue harbor. Moon blackened the sky, sun glittering through lunar caves at first a necklace of beads. Then a diamond-ring brighter than moonlight and more fiercely white. Finally, a crescent whose mimic with its star on a red sea of flag, billows on the mainland.

Gullets

barely move in the stillness before dawn but at first sky-light they stir, fishermen drowsy at the helm, beginning their slick trail across the waters. Sails stretching for the tautness of breeze, they will reach past the Turkish point before that gauzy air flows in towards us after lunch to tingle along the raised hair of our arms, clothed already in the sun's sheen.

I rest with Malouf's Priam in Ransom

, our small balcony set into a terracotta roof in a whitewashed hotel built once by Greeks. Waves furl and unfurl rhythmic on the rocks below my mind spinning in and out of a history layered through nine civilizations, Turkish words repeating around my English limits, both languages broken on my tongue now.

But small satchels of sound, words, are unnecessary inside the flow of mind, borders lost in a cobalt sea you think simply can't be a border, tides unfettered, its trysts with cloud free of barriers, breeze from it as boundless as a parent's love for a son clumping now behind me, tearing open coconut-coated Turkish delight.

A comfort in that, and the indigo sea, from which you cannot, after all, sail off the edge of the world. Comfort in that too, and that all that has come to pass was before, and will be after.

Very Seriously Ill or Injured

MONA NICOLE SFEIR || Sfeir, Mona Nicole. "Very Seriously Ill or Injured--The casualty status of a person whose illness or injury is classified by medical authority to be of such severity that life is imminently endangered. Also called VSII. See also casualty status." World Literature Today, vol. 91, no. 6, 2017, p. 46. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A511293585/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=5fb78b69

When do you know you are imminently endangered? The dodo egg so

fragile yet able to hold an entire species until the last yolk is

licked. Dried head and foot housed in the Oxford University Museum

of Natural History. Include a name tag for casualty status.

How is it in our hardness we push across the earth/whose? There is

a thrust in creating. Yet how thin the skin stretched over the life

dividing within. What does it mean to authorize injury and/or death

in the name of progress and freedom? Prepare a speech.

A space penned for liberty. Take its temperature. Readings will

differ widely. Unarmed + shot [how many?] Here is my tally: where

in the world are you standing? Beneath an electronic billboard sink

a needle deep into an escape valve. Home/job/coin-less:less:less.

Build a wall and continue to bomb.

A species that can hold rape as a weapon of war. Ground zero of our

existence is where to place the bomb. Casualty status is not

divulged. Where are you waging empire? Examine our democracy and

report imminently endangered. Repeat overseas and redact. Access

the damage and classify. Then sink to your knees and weep.

Mending Wall

ROBERT FROST || Frost, Robert. “Mending Wall.” North of Boston. London: David Nutt, 1914. Print.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father's saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."

Crossing

NATALIE SCENTERS-ZAPICO || Scenters-Zapico, Natalie. "Crossing." Prairie Schooner, vol. 87, no. 3, 2013, p. 59. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A342091708/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=41402090

You buy a passport made at a print shop for fifty dollars--perfect but for a hair stuck in the laminate by your date of birth. Not

noticeable

you say and I believe you. We walk across the bridge to Juarez and I expect there to be an explosion--for the streets to glow red.

It's been five years since we've been back and the city is a ghost-- the traffic zooms. It still is a city

, I say. Let's go to a

bar

, you say.

We pose in faux fur with cigarettes for nightlife pictures, get vicious, and leave at 3 a.m. I stumble in my platform heels and stop

at another bar to get drinks one last time in a to-go cup. By 3:30 I turn litterbug and throw our empties into the ink-stained street.

I brush my hands against the chain-link fence as we cross the bridge back to El Paso. Cameras every ten feet--we smile

and kiss for them. Behind us a man yells, That's it, that's all you have for me murder capital of the world

? U.S. border agents wave us across--

I'm too white to tell and you look clean enough, but one of us is Illegal. No one says a word--we all breathe pollution and blood clots. To think

we didn't need to get a visa. To think we could have saved the fifty dollars. Still easy

, we laugh and agree to cross again next weekend. We wonder

why we call each other Cielo, why we call each other Angel? We wonder how two cities are split, how they grow. But mi amor, watch how they collide.

Immigration

KEVIN PRUFER || Prufer, Kevin. "Immigration." The Southern Review, vol. 50, no. 3, 2014, p. 411. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A375818185/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=94157335

When the wheels came down over Miami, the stowaway in the landing gear, half-frozen and unconscious, slipped from the wheel wells into blue air. How amazed he must have been to wake to that falling sensation and the rapidly approaching sodium lamps of the airport parking lot.

The couple that owned the car his body crushed was astonished at the twist of fate that brought his life so forcefully into theirs. Their young son would always remember it, how just then the cold shadow of another airplane passed over him, how the bits of jewel-like glass lay strewn across the asphalt like the dead man's thoughts.

The Pilgrim Maiden

DOROTHY WHITEHEAD HOUGH || Hough, Dorothy Whitehead. "The Pilgrim Maiden." American Lyric Poetry, edited by Gerta Aison, Galleon Press, 1936, p. 131. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/LTF0000317469WK/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=6c112955

Lo, I have come a weary way;

Crossed restless, stormy seas;

Seeking a new home in this strange wilderness

Where I may worship God

In freedom, as my conscience bids me do.

I, the first white woman

To set foot upon this sea washed rock.

A moment pause I here,

For when my feet upon this new soil

Firmly stand,

There shall be,

There can be

No turning back.

Lo, he that sets his hand unto the plough

Must forward go.

And I, his mate, to make a home for him,

Must constant be in purpose.

Together we shall build a nation,

Convert the heathen,

Tame their savage ways.

Together we shall conquer the wilderness

For all the generations yet unborn.

While steadfast

Through all trials,

Through pioneer privations

Pressing on,

Dedicated to love of God and liberty.

Amphibians

JOSEPH O. LEGASPI || Legaspi, Joseph O. “Amphibians.” The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database, 2014, http://www.splitthisrock.org/poetry-database/poem/amphibians

Amphibians live in both.

Immigrants leave their land,

hardening in the sea.

Out of water.

In Greek, amphibian means

“on both sides of life.”

Terra and aqua. Shoreline.

In fresh water:

amphibians lay

shell-less eggs;

immigrants give birth

to Americans.

Tadpoles, polliwogs

metamorphose: gills

in early stages. On land,

amphibians develop lungs.

Immigrants develop lungs.

Through damp skin

amphibians oxygenate.

Immigrants toil

and sleep breathlessly.

Skin forms glands.

Eyes form eyelids.

Amphibians seek land; immigrants, other lands.

Their colors brighten, camouflage.

They’ve been known to fall

out of the sky.

Fully at home in the rain.

Nomenclatures of Invisibility

MAHTEM SHIFERRAW || Shiferraw, Mahtem. “Nomenclatures of Invisibility.” Poem-a-Day, 2017. Academy of American Poets, https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/nomenclatures-invisibility

My ancestors are made with water—

blue on the sides, and green down the spine;

when we travel, we lose brothers at sea

and do not stop to grieve.

Our mothers burn with a fire

that does not let them be;

they whisper our names

nomenclatures of invisibility

honey-dewed faces, eyes sewn shut,

how to tell them

the sorrow that splits us in half

the longing for a land not our own

the constant moving and shifting of things,

within, without—

which words describe

the clenching in our stomachs

the fear lodged deeply into our bones

churning us from within,

and the loss that follows us everywhere:

behind mountains, past oceans, into

the heads of trees, how to swallow

a tongue that speaks with too many accents—

when white faces sprout

we are told to set ourselves ablaze

and this smell of smoke we know—

water or fire, or both,

because we have drowned many at a time

and left our bodies burning, or swollen, or bleeding

and purple—this kind of language we know,

naming new things into our invisibility

and this, we too, call home.

VIII. Language and Borders

Beth Koehler

After having compiled this selection, I hope to never read poetry ever again. It is clearly something I, personally, am incapable of enjoying. I do not care if that makes me sound close-minded, petty, or uneducated.

An inflammatory statement like that is not a wise nor elegant way to start this selection, I am aware, but it does explain the incredibly pessimistic and dour feeling one may have as they read these poems. In a way, that is a mark of their masterful use of language—none of the poems represented here are depressing or contain saddening events outright, yet there is an overarching feeling of existential misery and futility. Much can be said about language used in poetry—it has been said, and in far more pleasant words than I could manage—but I think that, to most people, language is a bridge of communication, connecting us to each other. However, a bridge must be crossed to be useful. A border can be crossed, sometimes. What really is the difference between them? Is language a bridge across the borders of misunderstanding or another border between us? As shown by the poems here, there is no consensus. As such, rather than analyzing a bunch of poems with a single, overarching theme, please think of these as a journey through ideas, to be read and considered in a linear order.

1. Love’s Language: the most optimistic. Here language is not considered necessary, as the speaker can “feel” what the child means.

2. Love and Language: the opposite of Love’s Language. Even if one bares one’s soul, would they understand? Is language a bridge across borders of misunderstanding, or another border between us?

3. Language of Music: introduces the idea that there is an alternative to language that allows one to be understood.

4. You Haven’t Forgotten the Language of Plants: here language is used as a tool of precision. Without language, certain things are simply unable to be conveyed.

5. Language: with a more literal interpretation of borders while sticking with the nature theme of the previous poem, the idea that man should not or cannot ask certain questions is troubling. Are these borders going to exist until the end of time, as water flows down a river?

6. The American Language: here language is a unifying—but oppressive—force. It is used to create a rigid, inflexible, unchangeable world of borders.

7. You Say It Is Not: What happens when people who are unable or unwilling to branch out into the boundaries of other people?

8. The Space Between Words: Here it is not what is being said but what is intuited that is causing strife. The border of understanding has been crossed, but it has not helped. Are boundaries worth crossing?

9. An Irish Word: Words can evoke specific ideas depending on one’s relationship with the word. The meaning of words is not absolute; the borders between the meaning of words is soft and malleable.

10. To the Language Spoken in the Country of Urgency: a more humorous poem to end this. It raises many questions depending on interpretation. Is he hearing what he wants to hear? Do the speaker’s inarticulate cries become meaningful because he almost died? Is it simply a joke about how “hard” Arabic sounds to non-natives? Is it about how words can affect us so profoundly and connect us, or do we imagine the connection?

These are not absolute interpretations, but a basic guideline of the thought processes that went into each piece.

To the Language Spoken in the Country of Urgency by Rick Hilles is probably the best singular pick for the concept of this selection, simply because it is so open to interpretation. “I must have said something/to the man in my confusion,” the opening lines, already places us in the world of language. It specifies that he said “something” in “confusion;” the lack of clarity in what he said should be a barrier between what he said and anyone understanding. His confusion is actually due to instinctually grabbing the man before he is ran over by a vehicle. After some awkward moments, as they go on with life, in lines 15-16 the man “asks/if I know Arabic.” While the speaker has no idea what they were trying to say, it still sparked some area of recognition in the man he saved. Without intention, without even the actual capability of communication between them (as the speaker had no idea what they said), some sort of interest has been generated.

The speaker’s reply, tacked on at the end of line 16, is revealing—“(I say, I wish!)”. Communication—speaking another language—is a very common goal for people to have, but one relatively few ever complete. The language barrier is one that is common to come across and one that is common to never overcome. But why would he even ask? The speaker has given no indication that he spoke any language but English. The final four lines are from the Arabic man, stating:

"Because just then it sounded

a lot like you were calling me

by name in the language of

my other mother country!"

While humorous, this raises many questions. What about his “confused sound” reminded the man of Arabic? Is it a joke about how Arabic can sound sudden or harsh to English speakers?

Interestingly, the man specified that it sounded like the speaker was not only speaking his native language, but that he called him by name. This makes it sound deeply personal. A person responds better when referred to specifically, as opposed to being referred to generically by terms like “you.” Something resonated with him. The obvious answer is that, being saved from potential death, the man is simply ascribing meaning where there was none, and this is likely meant to be the case. But why would such a thought be plausible? A person’s special relationship with words may cause them to project, certainly, yet the man seems almost hopeful. Even if the relation was an accident of misunderstanding, the sound itself clearly means something to the Arabic man. A border was crossed unintentionally, without the use of words, but was still described through the lens of language. The sound was profound. Is language necessary, in this case?

Mahatma Gandhi has a famous quote, “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” Judging by the last poem, there seems to be some merit. But it’s also revealing: use the wrong language, and you erect a barrier, or only partially cross it. Use the correct language, and the intention of what you say goes right where you want it to be. It doesn’t have to be literal spoken language. Language is the alpha and omega of border creation and crossing, the top and the bottom, the beginning and the end. Such a shame it is so imprecise. Maybe there is no difference between language and borders. We cannot escape either of them.

THEIR little language the children

Have, on the knee as they sit;

And only those who love them

Can find the key to it.

The words thereof and the grammar

Perplex the logician's art;

But the heart goes straight with the meaning

And the meaning is clear to the heart.

So thou, my Love, hast a language

That, in little, says all to me: --

But the world cannot guess the sweetness

Which is hidden with Love and thee.

Palgrave, Francis Turner. "Love's Language." Poets & Poetry of England in the 19th Century: with Additions, Rev. & Enl. ed., edited by Rufus W. Griswold and R. H. Stoddard, James Miller, 1874, p. 543. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/LTF0000519794WK/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=2865865f. Accessed 4 Apr. 2018.

LOVE that is alone with love

Makes solitudes of throngs;

Then why not songs of silences, --

Sweet silences of songs?

Parts need words: the perfect whole

Is silent as the dead;

When I offered you my soul

Heard you what I said?

Bevington, L.S. "Love and Language." Poems, Lyrics, and Sonnets, by Louisa S. Bevington, Elliot Stock, 1882, p. 117. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/LTF0000055175WK/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=90014cc1. Accessed 4 Apr. 2018.

Two open windows where I went to sing

Faced north and east; and red leaves danced outside.

Within, the sounds of many practicing

Swirled as the leaves when hunting winds range wide.

And as I sang I set my spirit free;

Then suddenly, before I scarcely knew,

The sky came flowing in and buried me

Beneath an airy sea of perfect blue.

In that clear moment I stood dumb with wonder

That music speaks the language of all things;

Of sky and flowers, of love and lust for plunder,

Of pride and pain, and thoughts that soar with wings.

Mere words can never climb where thought ascends,

But music just begins where language ends.

Davis, Esther Eugenia. "Language of Music." Caravan of Verse, edited by Milton J. March, Caravan Publishing, 1938, p. 353. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/LTF0000160099WK/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=8056c592. Accessed 4 Apr. 2018.

I know, you've only come back to tell me something,

Something that the clouds couldn't say,

I know you can't

Stay, you haven't warm clothes

And you haven't forgotten the language of plants,

You've only come to leave on my brow ...

A sign that says, "Good Night."

You get cold and you go away

Without me,

All of the animals of the world

Come near, they see the sign

And they worship me,

The woods bring an offering of leaves,

The lizards, their skin,

But around me there is light.

And then

The animals of the world

Hold me accountable, and make me pay,

The woods draw back and whisper, offended,

You've gone.

You've left no bridge, you've placed

The sign of the night on my face

But you haven't told me

If night will ever come.

Blandiana, Ana. "You Haven't Forgotten the Language of Plants." Translated by Paul Scott Derrick and Viorica Patea. Chicago Review, vol. 60, no. 3, 2017, p.

This is a country of little rivers—

Dog river, Mississquoi, Otter Creek—

Slicing villages with gold at sunrise,

Looping them with silver on yellow afternoons,

Putting them to sleep with cloud-purple and mountain-purple at dusk.

This is a country of small rivers running north and west—

Winooski, Lamoille, Ottauquechee;

And the Connecticut going south and keeping the maples of Vermont

From burning with the maples of New Hampshire.

Apple trees on a slope say what a man cannot say

And ask questions a man cannot ask,

Knowing he will not be answered.

A grindstone under apple trees by a white house,

Old wagons under apple trees by a deserted barn,

A scythe hung in the low crotch of an apple tree east of a rocky hill—

These are the stunted speech of a country

Slow to live and equally slow to die.

Stone walls in the South,

Piled along hill-ridges and through the woods,

Stone walls up as far as Dorset and Chelsea.

Split-rail fences in the North,

Zigzagging between fields,

Running beside the roads.

Barbed-wire fences in the North, for pastures,

Barbed-wire for hay-fields and river-lots.

In the North we leave the stones where they grew ...

Wetly out of brook bottoms,

Jagged and dark out of the hills.

Stone walls, fences, rivers, apple trees—

These speak of a slow country,

Of white-spired villages between two hills

And the loves and hates and passions between two hills.

These talk of abandoned farms and abandoned lives

And of men who ask no questions of the earth,

Knowing earth will not answer.

Stone walls, rivers, fences, apple trees—

These are the language of a slow country,

The curious speech of a rock-bitten,

Inarticulate heart.

Frost, Frances Mary. "Language." Vermont Verse: An Anthology, edited by Walter John Coates and Frederick Tupper, Stephen Daye Press, 1932, p. 214. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/LTF0000225573WK/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=4093bd01. Accessed 4 Apr. 2018.

One by one, the scholars come to learn the Puritan tongue.

Sit down on hard benches manufactured by right-minded people.

The right angles of the benches, sculptured self-portraits of right-angled wills.

Whose chins sway forty-odd states and who knows how many territories.

Whose jaws rule round backs straight.

Backs that might have grown thoughtless from too much sitting under trees.

Once crooked, aimless trees that have themselves been hewn down and planed level.

Elms of New England, oaks of the middle west, eucalypti of California.

Their heads prone to escape rooted grooves at the whim of a breeze or two.

One by one, professors rise to lines as rigid as pencils.

Knock down school walls, you will find all the pencils vertical parallels.

All the scholars right-angle-triangle parallels.

All the tongues, gliding out of and back into mouths, horizontal parallels.

Everybody, everything, right-angle Puritan parallels.

Acute, if there be any such, and obtuse, firmly converted.

Acute minds blunted, obtuse minds sharpened.

Lowered or raised to the balance of the ideal equal.

The right mind triumphant.

The thirteen parallel pioneer stripes, justified and multiplied.

Kreymborg, Alfred. "The American Language." Less Lonely, by Alfred Kreymborg, Harcourt Brace & Company, 1923, p. 97. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/LTF0000376766WK/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=2df22646. Accessed 4 Apr. 2018.

About the dying but carrying us through 

What we become at the shore while you turn 

Toward the waves. One after another

We come, each wandering the coastline 

To get here, some arriving late with much to say 

While others go off to be alone,

And in this last light we gather 

As if by some fire we built without you 

But with possibility in mind,

And we move just enough to stay 

Awake which is what we believe you want 

When you say you are so afraid

We will forget. Instead it is you who no longer 

Remember as you turn away and into 

The wind the water the persistent boat

And how you get to be everything, 

Get to be what is gone and wanted back.

Black, Sophie Cabot. "You Say It Is Not." The American Poetry Review, Mar.-Apr. 2011, p. 30. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A251858987/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=a36f7a5e. Accessed 4 Apr. 2018.

Did your mom move with you?

I know not to ask again. What isn't said crushes, as when I loaded Geranda into the matte-black horse trailer and she leaned her 1500 pounds against me.

For a moment that was it, I was air. My feet were not my feet, the voice that sliced through the yard not my voice.

They say you can't walk a straight line blindfolded. Today everything exists with more urgency. A red switchblade slips from a strangers pocket. The disemboweled rabbit lies face up in the grass.

I can tell you I know to listen to the space between words. I can tell you what's not said lives there, like: dead, like: distance, like: this grief will kill us if we let it.

Williams, Genevieve N. "The Space Between Words." Prairie Schooner, vol. 90, no. 3, 2016, p. 152+. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A465543633/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=f61f533e. Accessed 6 Apr. 2018.

Canny

 has always been an Irish word

   to my ear, so too its cousin crafty,

   suggesting not only an appreciation of close-work,

   fine-making, handwrought artistry,

   but a highly evolved reliance on one's wits to survive,

   stealth in the shadow of repressive institutions,

   "silence, exile, and cunning," in Joyce's admonition,

   ferret-sly, fox-quick, silvery, and elusive.

   Craft, akin to croft--

   a shepherd's crooked hawthorn staff,

   wind-polished wolds and peat-spent moorlands

   high in the Blue Stack Mountains.

   Akin to draught

--a pint of creamy stout

   or a good stout draught horse

   or a draughty old house

   like the one in which my grandfather was born

   near Drimnaherk, slate-roofed, hard-angled,

   ringed by thistles in a soil-starved coomb.

   His four brothers left home

   bound for Australia, South Africa, Liverpool, and Los Angeles

   losing track of each other at once and forever

   as if to loose the hawsers and set sail

   were to sever every filial tether.

   His name was Francis Daniel Campbell

   but my grandmother Anna was a Monaghan

   and her people had been

   Maguires, Morans, Mohans, Meehans,

   and other alliterative, slant-rhymed clans

   all the way back to the nameless

   bog dwellers and kine folk.

   When her father died suddenly in New York,

   he left three baby daughters and a widowed seamstress

   with no recourse but retreat

   to the old Rose Cottage overlooking Donegal Bay

   in a parish of trellised thorns and ricked hay,

   taking in mending and needlework to eat.

   Market days they rode the train into Derry

   to sell embroidered linens and hand-tatted lace,

   kerchiefs monogrammed z

 to a.

   She was nearing thirty

   when she married and recrossed the Atlantic

   and from her my own mother

   had a recipe for soda bread, piles of drop-stitch

   tablecloths, and a small stoneware pitcher

   hand-painted in folksy script--

   Be Canny Wi' the Cream.

   Nothing could move my brother and I to screams

   of laughter like that tiny pitcher,

   so serious of purpose, so quaintly archaic,

   as we slurped down bowls of Frosted Flakes

   before school in the breakfast nook.

   The scrupulous economy of the world it bespoke,

   the frugality toward which it gestured,

   were as inscrutable to us then

   as the great sea cliffs at Slieve League when

   we drove to the top at Amharc Mór

   on a road so thickly fleeced with mist

   we might have been lost if not for the sheep

   materializing like guardian imps,

   imperturbable creatures, black-faced ephreets,

   the ocean one vast, invisible gong

   struck by padded mallets or mailed fists.

   Amharc Mór

 means "the grand view" in Irish

   but all we saw was fog.

McGrath, Campbell. "An Irish Word." Ploughshares, vol. 37, no. 4, 2011, p. 78+. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A274875170/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=199b1bd0. Accessed 4 Apr. 2018.

I must have said something

to the man in my confusion

when I put my hand on his

shoulder long enough for

a cement truck to breeze by

--it would have killed him--

instantly, I think, when the light

changes and its change falls

through our long shadows,

spreading the news of sunset

over our faces and the wet streets

and we--the temporary single

organism of crowd--begin again

to cross the street, when the man

turns to face me now and asks

if I know Arabic. (I say, I wish!)

"Because just then it sounded

a lot like you were calling me

by name in the language of

my other mother country!"

Hilles, Rick. "To the Language Spoken in the Country of Urgency." Ploughshares, vol. 40, no. 1, 2014, p. 111. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A363790203/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=636f414e. Accessed 6 Apr. 2018.

IX. How Freedom and Movement Create Identity

Gabrielle Northrop, Ethan Griener, & Shreya Lad

A representative symbol of our world is the “global village,” depicting the homogenization of everything including the breaking of walls, the building of bridges; it is truly a tiresome facade to keep up. Movement is closely associated with freedom and identity. The ability to move across schools of thought, across free opinions, across countries and jobs, across religious faiths, and even romantic partners, speaks miles for freedom to enjoy, cherish, and hold. But do we all bear this badge of privilege equally, all over? Are we justified in stepping on someone’s freedom to protect our own?

Migration from one location to another is how boundaries can be crossed. The selected poems contain speakers that are crossing (a) borders, depicting various circumstances of migration. Migration is “the movement of a person or people from one country, locality, place of residence, etc., to settle in another”. However, for the purposes of this anthology, it is important to understand migration metaphorically as well as literally. Commonly, migration represents movement of the body from one location to another, but there is also migration of the mind and spirit. This encompasses but is not limited to moral realizations of the speaker, emotional changes and shifting opinions. This anthology is a curtain into the extensive abyss of movement, of migration. Geographical, spiritual, personal, metaphorical, and literal migration of the body, mind, and spirit. It attempts to examine the many facets of human movement, intellectual movement and physical movement captured so perfectly by fifteen supremely talented poets, many of whom shared these migratory experiences within their lives. Some of them belonged to a diaspora community, others shared experiences from being whisked away at a small age to a country that was not, and never felt like, home.

The choice of poems is not simply an outcome of google.search.intext:borders; the selection process is a very meticulous procedure of sorting through multiple levels of emotional connection with the chief criteria being how right a poem felt, how close it came to what we want it to say. Hopefully, the reader can easily identify the theme tying together the poems without any prior knowledge of the theme whatsoever. One question for the anthology was: Could this poem represent the anthology as a whole? If not, we looked deeper. We’ve tried to give priority, throughout our selection, to poets who have personally experienced migration, and that it reflects and improves their poetry. A perfect example is Agha Shahid Ali’s Land, which is a ghazal, written uniquely in the non-English form, with vivid imagery of a remembered land. What better way to demonstrate how identities are created by movement and play out in our lives? The arrangement of poems is a (hopefully) smooth and relevant transition from literal, physical migration from one place to another to a more figurative, abstract idea of movement, where the connection is not as explicit.

The initial set of poems is a window into the theme being reflected in the anthology, with masterpieces like For a New Home and It’s the Boat That Haunts You which make the theme and our interpretation click together instantly. Further ahead, there is a deeper glimpse into the implications of trying to cross borders between the living and the dead, trying to create new migratory identities, and ending up with the typical identities associated with migrants. Borders act as “that which serves to indicate the bounds or limits of anything whether material or immaterial; also the limit itself”. In other words, a border is a literal or metaphorical “line” that could or could not be crossed, however, the relevance of boundaries oftentimes arises when the boundary has been crossed. An example of crossing a boundary would be moving to a new home, or relocating from a familiar place to a different one Ultimately, the collection ends on a grim, deeply existential note, with That Rat’s Death, that raises questions on space, freedom and life; our idea with this conclusion being, to what end does this exercise, this movement, these identities, stay with us, or even make a difference? That, of course, is up to the reader to enjoy holding on to.

The insights we gathered about the topic came in sudden epiphanies and hasty realizations. Migration, we’ve realized, is not limited to the body or to space. The mind migrates all the time- goes on expeditions, even, between opinions and ideas and perspectives. Eileen Myles describes this phenomenon perfectly, in That Rat’s Death: “we don’t think that war/is such an incredible/mess but it was/just yesterday/and in ancient poems/years ago in the past”. Just like us, with time, with changing contexts and situations, our mind migrates and develops, evolves. There must be no physical crossing involved for migration, no domestic borders, no walls. Only two separate states that can be transcended, however you wish.

Another intriguing insight is struggle of movement. Without risk or perils, without ‘looking for a new home,’ there is no relief, nor liberation. As illustrated by Crossing Borders, there exists immense peril, immense struggle involved in movement. There is no guarantee that it will come through or be successful, including the question of survival. Yet the individual, in her folly to know, to experience, to feel and understand, undertakes endeavors that are full of hardships and tough fights. But most commonly, these experiences, these struggles are imposed, and must be undertaken, perhaps, in desperation to survive. ‘When we cross the borders/we hope one of us will make it/though we know one won't’ (Crossing Borders).

Finally, to migrate is to taste great freedom and power. But most importantly, it is a luxury. Freedom is policed, controlled, and restricted through various catalysts: law enforcement, personal agency, or weather conditions. Migratory control translates to refuge, travel, settlement, education, access to great art or literature, migration from a narrow state to a new horizon, and more. This brings me to the last insight: migration is not always freedom, sometimes, it is control, or it is dominance. Individuals migrate and identities are imposed onto them, their existence is cataloged and lumped together with certain labels, behaviors and ideas. Crossing Borders recognizes this in the passage: “We are given new names, new/sounds for our sorrows. We are/told new stories that somehow/still do not belong to us”. Sometimes, migration is not wielding the power to develop or change or move: sometimes; mostly, in fact, it is the desperation to survive, or the search for an escape. Or it is highly controlled and restricted without relief, like The Immigration Officer shows us: “What will my government have at length to say /If I allow in too many or too few, or give stay”.

The poem that speaks most for this anthology is Boundaries by Catherine Coblentz. The poem illustrates mankind’s desire to secure individualized boundaries “and bound [themself to] eternity” (Boundaries). Oftentimes, migration to new environments can cross emotional boundaries, causing instability or discomfort. Loss of security does not always yield to humanity’s boundaries of migration, as exemplified in Boundaries. Even though the subject of the poem does not physically move, the speaker still paints a picture of man “look[ing] round…[a] curve” and “see[s]” “beyond a mountain”. This imagery implies the boundaries can be metaphorically crossed, even if just in one’s own mind. Furthermore, it illuminates humanity’s curiosity in crossing boundaries to unexplored places. Unexplored is important, because one cannot see around a curve or through a mountain without physically going to do so. This poem precisely depicts the importance of crossing borders in relation to migration. However, it does not represent the other poems, as they all should be viewed individually. It, very simply, is the voice of the anthology.

Borders: one word, millions of interpretations. When it comes to thinking of what this could imply, there are so many possibilities that come to mind, so many images: fence, a jail cell, an airport, or a map, or a cemetery, perhaps. Anything and everything that puts distance between something, that encloses thought, belief, idea or behavior. But there is another consideration of borders, and this is identities. Language identities; filial, marital, national identities, borders between and within individuals and minds are all potential identities. The list is endless. In our work, we hope to have condensed and compiled together at least a fraction of those possibilities to be pondered about, to be felt. So whether it is a rat’s death you find yourself immersed in, or the inside of an immigration officer’s mind, one thing, for us, as it will be for you, is certain- never was a word be so thoroughly illuminated, so thoroughly understood, so thoroughly felt, than with the creation of this work.

And the word?

Not ‘Borders’.

Poetry.

Looking Through by Kane, Joan

I follow a new life, Along with you And the sea

Which never seems to move-- Teaching the children How not to fear the ocean,

To leave me, go away, And not come back.

Mud flats history opaque And without new variant.

Near freezing, the water is nothing To be dissolved into and the light

Never gives me a reason to do anything. Instead, we walk together uphill,

Only to speak of something beautiful About invisible technique, proportion

In a circle offish: Another blue abstraction.

III

I make you a stranger. Here, There are too many angles. The hills of home always in contour, Their trees turning from the top down. Between us is the matter at hand, Something different from its sources.

With Contact by Opal, Anthony

A meeting of banana-seed ants in the shape of a maple leaf.

Broken berries on the sidewalk.

A squirrel chewing a sprig of mint, and then the wind's imperfect circles.

Where were you that morning

when the rain suddenly began to open like a thousand questions,

when it was so plainly explained to me

that raindrops form within the body of a dark cloud the same way

a bud forms within a stem,

coming forth in time--brooding in time--blooming with contact.

For a New Home by Marinoni, Rosa Zagnoni

Oh, love this house, and make of it a Home --

A cherished, hallowed place.

Root roses at its base, and freely paint

The glow of welcome on its smiling face!

For after friends are gone, and children marry,

And you are left alone. . .

The house you loved will clasp you to its heart,

Within its arms of lumber and of stone.

No Boundaries by Hazelton, Rebecca

They left all the doors open.

What doors were for they couldn't say.

The sheets flapped from the trees.

The mattress on the lawn grew gray

and sometimes one of them would lie

across it and another would stand behind, motioning

to the others.

Forks and the spoons glittered

in the grass. The dogs ran in packs,

and from the unlocked houses

tugged the ruined carpets out,

tugged the children out--

the ones that hadn't run--

and they looked at the children

and couldn't remember

what they were for.

People kept waking up

in the wrong beds,

next to the wrong people,

but after a while

they weren't so bad.

The children left

and formed bands in the woods,

smearing their faces with finger-paint.

No one cut their hair.

Boundaries by Coblentz, Catherine Cate

Man cannot look round the roadway's curve

Or beyond a mountain see,

And yet he dares to fashion creeds

And bound eternity.

It’s the Boat That Haunts You by Nienow, Matthew

And so it is, the boat has come to own you, has learned to speak a language you cannot help

but agree with, its voice the dark lapping of water against the hull, its song the wind

in the stays while you sleep, dreaming of a bowsprit to hold you against the waves, and the boat

curls golden bracelets of cedar around your wrists as you plane each

plank, its touch the dream of a body becoming whole--to make the shape, to be shaped--and the boat

says please, says the honed edge

against clear grain is my small prayer to your devotion.

May you forget your life, may you

always be close.

The Pilgrim Maiden by Hough, Dorothy Whitehead

Lo, I have come a weary way;

Crossed restless, stormy seas;

Seeking a new home in this strange wilderness

Where I may worship God

In freedom, as my conscience bids me do.

I, the first white woman

To set foot upon this sea washed rock.

A moment pause I here,

For when my feet upon this new soil

Firmly stand,

There shall be,

There can be

No turning back.

Lo, he that sets his hand unto the plough

Must forward go.

And I, his mate, to make a home for him,

Must constant be in purpose.

Together we shall build a nation,

Convert the heathen,

Tame their savage ways.

Together we shall conquer the wilderness

For all the generations yet unborn.

While steadfast

Through all trials,

Through pioneer privations

Pressing on,

Dedicated to love of God and liberty.

Immigration by Prufer, Kevin

An Immigration Officer Thinks by Irvine-Harrison, Aldyth

Do humans have a monopoly on the potion To keep our appendages in perpetual motion? We make many journeys in our life's vacation, To visit or flee or explore new locations. The flight through the womb is the life adventure, The immigration counter is studded with tension. Numerous features pleading arrogant or pleasing, Colours from ebony to brown gold and fleecing. Have they no questions? What are they seeking? Work, matrimony, peace, snow or yearly heating? How many souls have I dispensed with today? What will my government have at length to say If I allow in too many or too few, or give stay To the one linked to the other political plea, Will security be risked on the back of a flea? A thousand questions gallop through this mind, A hundred I need ask to justify to my kind, That I executed my duty, right on the line.

Crossing Borders

When we leave our homes,
someone has set them on fire
though our eyes are trained to see
this no longer. Instead, this house,

we say, is filled with yellow daisies,
and its backyard houses the acacia tree
mother planted years ago.

We are given new names, new
sounds for our sorrows. We are
told new stories that somehow
still do not belong to us.

When we cross the borders
we hope one of us will make it
though we know one won't.

Conversations are brief
and chopped; ordinary things
fill our mouths, washing the
sour taste of bleeding things.

The lands that grow beneath
our feet are on fire too, and here
we see ourselves reflected back.

The lines that separate us are many,
and many more we follow, or
hold, or hide until we see each other again

in our sleeping, we become yellow daisies
and mother the acacia tree housing us all.

Keepsake Mill

Over the borders, a sin without pardon,

Breaking the branches and crawling below,

Out through the breach in the wall of the garden,

Down by the banks of the river we go.

Here is a mill with the humming of thunder,

Here is the weir with the wonder of foam,

Here is the sluice with the race running under --

Marvellous places, though handy to home!

Sounds of the village grow stiller and stiller,

Stiller the note of the bo-day,

Wheel and keep roaring and foaming for ever

Long after all of the boys are away.

Home for the Indies and home from the ocean,

Heroes and soldiers we all will come home;

Still we shall find the old mill wheel in motion,

Turning and churning that river to foam.

You with the bean that I gave when we quarrelled,

I with your marble of Saturday last,

Honoured and old and all gaily apparelled,

Here we shall meet and remember the past.

The Night Traveller

Many a night far-faring

Along some desert vale,

My sword well-girded wearing

The shadows' skirts I trail.

Lost stars in the dreaming

Sea of darkness drown;

Lightnings flash, the gleaming

Borders of night's gown.

Night is an unsleeping

Ethiop warrior,

His wounded shoulder dripping

With the throbbing gore.

Land by Agha Shahid Ali

Swear by the olive in the God-kissed land—

There is no sugar in the promised land.

Why must the bars turn neon now when, Love,

I’m already drunk in your capitalist land?

If home is found on both sides of the globe,

home is of course here—and always a missed land.

The hour’s come to redeem the pledge (not wholly?)

in Fate’s "Long years ago we made a tryst" land.

Clearly, these men were here only to destroy,

a mosque now the dust of a prejudiced land.

Will the Doomsayers die, bitten with envy,

when springtime returns to our dismissed land?

The prisons fill with the cries of children.

Then how do you subsist, how do you persist, Land?

“Is my love nothing for I’ve borne no children?”

I’m with you, Sappho, in that anarchist land.

A hurricane is born when the wings flutter ...

Where will the butterfly, on my wrist, land?

You made me wait for one who wasn’t even there

though summer had finished in that tourist land.

Do the blind hold temples close to their eyes

when we steal their gods for our atheist land?

Abandoned bride, Night throws down her jewels

so Rome—on our descent—is an amethyst land.

At the moment the heart turns terrorist,

are Shahid’s arms broken, O Promised Land?

DetoNation by Ocean Vuong

There’s a joke that ends with — huh?

It’s the bomb saying here is your father.

Now here is your father inside

your lungs. Look how lighter

the earth is — afterward.

To even write the word father

is to carve a portion of the day

out of a bomb-bright page.

There’s enough light to drown in

but never enough to enter the bones

& stay. Don’t stay here, he said, my boy

broken by the names of flowers. Don’t cry

anymore. So I ran into the night.

The night: my shadow growing

toward my father.

The Rat’s Death by Eileen Myles

I’m proud

that I fed my avocado

to the mice this

week

To see that scattered dust

around the hole

I felt dis-

appointed the apple had

been spared

the throbbing

soup, home

he said it’s a storm

it’s a storm I thought

am I allowed

to ask entire questions

to take this

space alone

you bobbing

you painted in my dog’s

face so care-

fully

some kind of violence

stretches the thought so

long and allows the horns

of words to touch each

other. I think of him

taking

this much space.

you don’t know about this

dish towel

for that matter

who was I in another time

giving the tails so much

puzzled that these spices

went someplace else

they did today in a sandwich

the empty hall into which I am

reading

the empty country

an entire country

I wanted all of them

how I would like

just one to pick

things up in

its cities and its rain

its coast

the outer coat

78 rpm

silly

news-

papers

turning

cat on a porch

and other countries

nearby

& home ready for me

when I have

something to say or

show

if ever

my empty mistakes

my empty vase

my empty powers of horror

my empty sex

o bring the snow

that rat’s death

killed me because i

would see it for days

over and over and

it hardly could be the same

rat whose insides

whisked the street

we don’t think that war

is such an incredible

mess but it was

just yesterday

and in ancient poems

years ago in the past

dying the balloon just

bursts it cannot

bring u back again

the huge cool breath

the lake doesn’t want

you anymore or her

arms her sweet

muff or breast the storm

the past.

but no I won’t leave

my cheese out for them

anymore and I must be

the last person in the world

in new york to read him

who told us about mice

that sing & fill empty auditoriums

like us and our singing hearts

our formula for bringing

it out. Pulling the receptacle

apart watch the tiny ship

floating on it

smithereens

I ducked the tail edging over

taking a little bit more. The price

of wider concepts is not

choosing your drops oh

flicking me off reminding

me of you everyone yell at once

Two Rabbit legs jutting out

I keep my childhood

around almost more than every-

one and a mouse can share

my house wet toot tootsie

it’s kind of great the whole

thing is relative. Since I ad-

mired his mountains I imagin-

ed I was in his landscapes

but opening packages is occurring

all over the place. That’s a

strong image and I feel like

the smallness is directly rooted

forgetting to use the new cal-

endar I planned. These

marks (I imagined) are the sources

all the milk flooding wildly

over the rolling hills and out of

the sun’s comical eyes. Not tears

but creamy drops

of mammalian weather.

I’m given real information

and the most difficult part

is blindly creating the space

where the parts I can’t

see or even hear spread out

(like the night in Paris when

I walked to the movies

) onto my desk and the surrounding

hills into the bleachers where everyone

is pounding themselves bloody

in salute of the hunt

all I ever wanted was dinner

or at least his

love the delight I see

in him is equally empty for anyone

& probably that’s his

stealth. Inner lake. There’s a car a maroon

a colourless oval I can imagine the

seats and the feeling of hearing

a song as we’re weaving

over hills. There’s no break. Ev-

erybody I ever saw in my

seacoast community is already

facing the problems huge and

gloomy I grant you and the

night spills on my keys which

are splayed over the counter and

outside it’s light. & they are flip-

ping their cards every one of

them.

References

“Discover the Story of EnglishMore than 600,000 Words, over a Thousand Years.” Home : Oxford English Dictionary, OED, www.oed.com/.

Kane, Joan. "Looking Through." Prairie Schooner, vol. 86, no. 4, 2012, p. 35. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A312619299/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=ff392ea9. Accessed 8 Mar. 2018.

Brown, Betsy. "Contact High." Prairie Schooner, vol. 86, no. 3, 2012, p. 127+. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A302117325/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=d54520b2. Accessed 8 Mar. 2018.

Opal, Anthony. "With Contact." The Midwest Quarterly, vol. 53, no. 3, 2012, p. 272. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A287744089/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=bdc19666. Accessed 8 Mar. 2018.

Hough, Dorothy Whitehead. "The Pilgrim Maiden." American Lyric Poetry, edited by Gerta Aison, Galleon Press, 1936, p. 131. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/LTF0000317469WK/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=6c112955. Accessed 8 Mar. 2018.

Marinoni, Rosa Zagnoni. "For a New Home." Poems that Touch the Heart, New Enlarged ed., Doubleday & Company, 1956, p. 341. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/LTF0000431671WK/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=76da32e7. Accessed 8 Mar. 2018.

Sanders, Elsie Duncan. "New Home." The North America Book of Verse, vol. 1, p.48. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/LTF0000601840WK/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=25d92325.

Prufer, Kevin. "Immigration." The Southern Review, vol. 50, no. 3, 2014, p. 411. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A375818185/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=94157335. Accessed 8 Mar. 2018.

Irvine-Harrison, Aldyth. "An Immigration Officer Thinks." Kola, vol. 29, no. 1, 2017, p. 10. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A489813917/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=e9227bdf. Accessed 8 Mar. 2018.

Coblentz, Catherine Cate. "Boundaries." Book of Personal Poems, Albert Whitman & Company, 1936, p.49. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/LTF0000128420WK/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=bff9da20. Accessed 8 Mar. 2018.

Nienow, Matthew. "It's the Boat That Haunts You." New England Review, vol. 33, no. 1, 2012, p. 60. LitFinder, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A293668250/LITF?u=inspire&sid=LITF&xid=5f1f50a1. Accessed 8 Mar. 2018.

A Collaborative Poetry Project between the Students of FLAME and DePauw Universities

Title page image credit:

Introduction

In Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes

Bursting of photographs after trying to squeeze out old memories

Things We Carry On The Sea

Immigrant Can’t Write Poetry

My Father’s “Norton Introduction to Literature,” Third Edition (1981)

Translation for Mama

From the House of Yemanjá

Mango Poem

Banishment

Steps

Border Crossing Simulation

Care

My 16-month old daughter wakes from her nap

and cries. I pick her up, press her against my chest

and rub her back until my palm warms

like an old family quilt. “Daddy’s here, daddy’s here,”

I whisper. Here is the island of Oʻahu, 8,500 miles

from Syria. But what if Pacific trade winds suddenly

became helicopters? Flames, nails, and shrapnel

indiscriminately barreling towards us? What if shadows

cast against our windows aren’t plumeria

tree branches, but soldiers and terrorists marching

in heat? Would we reach the desperate boats of

the Mediterranean in time? If we did, could I straighten

my legs into a mast, balanced against the pull and drift

of the current? “Daddy’s here, daddy’s here,” I

whisper. But am I strong enough to carry her across

the razor wires of sovereign borders and ethnic

hatred? Am I strong enough to plead: “please, help

us, please, just let us pass, please, we aren’t

suicide bombs.” Am I strong enough to keep walking

even after my feet crack like Halaby pepper fields after

five years of drought, after this drought of humanity.

Trains and buses rock back and forth to detention centers.

Yet what if we didn’t make landfall? What if here

capsized? Could you inflate your body into a buoy

to hold your child above rising waters? “Daddy’s

here, daddy’s here,” I whisper. Drowning is

the last lullaby of the sea. I lay my daughter

onto bed, her breath finally as calm as low tide.

To all the parents who brave the crossing: you and your

children matter. I hope your love will teach the nations

that emit the most carbon and violence that they should,

instead, remit the most compassion. I hope, soon,

the only difference between a legal refugee and

an illegal migrant will be how willing

we are to open our homes, offer refuge, and

carry each other towards the horizon of care.

Bibliography

The Border: A Double Sonnet

An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum

Merging in Kas

Very Seriously Ill or Injured

Mending Wall

Crossing

Immigration

The Pilgrim Maiden

Nomenclatures of Invisibility

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