Something I Have Been Thinking About Lately (originally published as Daily Poem Practice Sept 2)

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*** if you are reading this on a cell phone, rotate it sideways. It's worth it, I promise.****

****A practice inspired by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer's A Hundred Falling Veils ****

 Something I Have Been Thinking About Lately



I don’t remember when

I started listening to Radio Bronco

As a channel to a more fluent

More connected version

Of my Spanish speaking self. 


I have been listening in the car

While I wash dishes

While I make dinner

For some time now, though. 


So imagine my horror

When sided by my eldest

A bilingual child not yet 8

When the Secretary of State

Came over the airwaves

And in plain English

painted horror stories

typical tropes about

guatemaltecos, salvadoreรฑos

everybody, save mexicaรฑos

and ended it with

“If you are here illegally, 

know the US Government

is coming for you!”


As with all parenting

so much of it is in real time:

I could have switched it off.

I could have said nothing.

But instead I turned to her

frightened eyes and said


“There is a reason

that woman didn’t mention

mexicaรฑos. Can you think

of why?”


And from there we talked about

xenophobia, how empires

are built on a strategy of 

divide and conquer


And here, days later

I hope what rings in her 

ears is


 “That is why we 

speak Spanish, we eat

pupusas, your 2nd

grade class is doing a 

 country study on Guatemala.

So women, so authorities, 

So a president like that

can’t trick you.”

A Thanksgiving Tree I made with my emerging multilingual students, many of whom hailed from Guatemala, Mexico and a few from El Salvador, Peru and Russia.

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