Portside

Este Puño Sí Se Ve/Dispatches from Barbed Wire

By Abigail Carl-Klassen

            Va caer, va caer, este muro va caer—Mujeres Obreras

            Border Wall Protest, Anapra, Chihuahua/Sunland Park, New Mexico, 2008

Beneath the iron sky

Mexican children kick their soccer ball across,

run after it, entering the U.S.

                                    --Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera

They still built the wall. Even though we marched downtown,

jackets and ties peering down from high rises as we shouted,

¡Muro, no. Pueblo sí! After we shut down Paisano, horns

pressed, sage smoke rising, matachines barefoot and rattling.

After we sipped sangre de Cristo through chain links year

after year on Día de Los Muertos. After our mayors declared,

¡Ya Basta! San Diego to Brownsville. After ámas pushed

strollers from Douglas to San Elizario. After comadres

from Mujer Obrera, striking hungry, cuffed themselves to

the Whitehouse gates and chanted, ¡Obama escucha, estamos

en la lucha! After Red Fronteriza. Hands across the Border.

Via Campesina. Centro Sin Fronteras. Las Americas. Project

Vida. Annunciation House. Border Interfaith. No More Deaths.

DMRS. MEChA. ACLU. Paso Del Norte Civil Rights Center.

Café Mayapan. UTEP Feminists. Unitarians. Low-Rider Kings.

Danza Azteca. Aoy, Guillen and Bowie. Committee for Labor

Justice. The Brown Berets. And even The Sierra Club. Got

together. After every editorial, town hall meeting and referendum.

After every interview on public television and radio. After every

headline splashed across The El Paso Times and El Diario.

After every deposition. Every panel. Every conference. Every

prayer service, rosary and candle. Every documentary filmed

and screened. Every art show and open mic. After every Libro-

traficante underground library and rally. After every fundraising

plato de enchiladas, gorditas, tamales y pozole. After every

direct action. No rocks, just crosses painted with the names

of the fallen. After every Know Your Rights presentation. After

every housing, tutoring and counseling referral. After every

letter trashed by every congressman and senator. Except for

Beto, who stood in the center of the Bridge of the Americas,

sporting his The Border Makes America Great trucker cap.

After every Donald Trump piñata was bought and smashed.

After the Curandera told us through barbed wire that Lucha is

not just protest, but also pachanga. After the afternoon

we decided to play volleyball, protestors turned into pick-up

teams on each side of the border. The fence, our net, ball

lofting, quiet taps, save the occasional spike and slide in the

sand, laughing above the Migra’s megaphone behind us. Cease

and desist. We’re still here. In protest. In pachanga. Fists raised.

Abigail Carl-Klassen was raised in rural west Texas and radicalized on the U.S.-Mexico border. She has done docupoetic work with migrant workers, Old Colony Mennonite communities in Mexico and Texas, social workers, homeless communities, immigrant communities along the U.S.-Mexico border and most recently, with Central American migrants and asylum seekers in Mexico. Her work has appeared in ZYZZYVA, Catapult, Cimarron Review, Willow Springs, Guernica, Aster(ix) and Kweli, among others. She is a staff writer for Poets Reading the News and her chapbook Shelter Management is available from dancing girl press. She earned an MFA from the University of Texas El Paso’s Bilingual Creative Writing Program and taught at El Paso Community College and the University of Texas El Paso. Before becoming a college instructor, she worked in community development and in the El Paso public schools.

This poem was originally published in Imaniman: Poets Writing in the Anzaludúan Borderlands.