Portside

Amending Wall

By Darrel Alejandro Holnes

If “crucified” means one has died

on the cross, then what is the word

in English for dying at the crossing

between countries? What word describes

when a brown woman’s dreams of being

something like a white man are killed

at the intersection between his dreamt-up borders

and his dream-come-true border patrol?

“White man” like dead men printed

or minted on money more valuable

than the pesos in her purse.

“White man” like gods on horseback come

to conquer their India after reading

a mistaken map. “White man” like the grace

of misinterpreted omens turned

into a chance for vicious attack.

“White man” like buying but outlawing

cocaine to catch the “brown man” in the crossfire

of its trade. “White man” like picket fences

in award-winning films

about the privilege of being “so over”

privilege that he yearns

for something “real.”

Something there is that loves

a wall, that builds a boundary, that calls

the structure “love of country.”

Something there is that kills those who trespass.

Something there is that buries

bodies at a border as foundation stones

for yet another wall. But something there is that doesn’t love

fathers saying “good fences make good neighbors.”

Something doesn’t love a Man carving up

a continent and its people to make a new world

in the image of old words like the name of god

instead of new words like the name of one’s own desires

to divide life into here and after by crossing an ocean

as if it were the pearly gates. O, Amerikkka,

if anywhere there are limits are beginnings and ends,

then Heaven has to be a nothing

loving a something loving its everything;

then life or country and its borders

ain’t nothing but a thing.

                                                After Robert Frost

Reprinted by permission of the author.

Darrel Alejandro Holnes is the co-author of PRIME: Poetry & Conversations, the co-editor of Happiness, The Delight-Tree: An Anthology of Contemporary International Poetry in honor of the International Day of Happiness. His poetry has been featured in Poetry Magazine, Callaloo, Best American Experimental Writing, Day One, and elsewhere in print and online. He teaches at New York University and works with writers at the United Nations.