fences
a border is imaginary, a fence an attempt at reality. a fence is a perspective. if a fence has 2 sides, my side, your side, then the fence is 2-sided, 2-faced, can’t be trusted. a fence is a binary, a border, a line, a division. it is a thing that greens the grasses on either side, a progenitor of quips, of longing. its very existence makes us want what’s on the other side, makes us green with envy. or, is there to shield us from view, from seeing the horizon.
none of my white friends were ever accused of coming to america from the other side of a border. they were never asked if they were documented, where they were really from. they never overstayed their welcome, they weren’t lawbreakers. they were the wild west, heroic outlaws, legends. movies & myths were made about them, statues erected, saloons named after; they weren’t criminals, like us, detested, dehumanized, locked out of sight, slandered & lied about.
none of my white friends came to america & had to pay a cover fee, hired a coyote, died in an overheated, overcrowded truck bed, never gave all their money to a lawyer who disappeared with their every penny because you can’t steal value from something that has none.
none of my white friends were hunted down by la migra or used as political powder kegs. my white friends braved oceans on pintos and santa marias, they stood in orderly lines behind the easy to see over fences of ellis island, they were the tired & huddled masses yearning to breathe free. my white friends were never called illegal, they were settlers, pioneers, explorers; they braved frontiers, they were claim-layers, homesteaders. they built fences that allowed them to keep what was never theirs, created new borders, told us not to cross them, erased what was already ours, made lies to tell & passed them down to their children.
my white friends called us border-crossers, wetbacks, migrants, sneaks. we were beggars & thieves. we were dirty & contagious. they were economic emigrants forced out by aristocracy, they came seeking tolerance & evangelical grandeur, they were praised for getting out of a bad circumstance; we were too lazy to even have boot straps, we were running from problems of our own making, to blame for our condition.
or, a fence has more sides, the longitude & latitude, the up, the down; the side-to-side, the above & below on axes that extend forever. the fence is beyond what it seems, is more than meets the eye, is limitless but also in place; it is as certain as the endless skyline, as sturdy as a post that holds the earth in place. so, we border crossers, we breakers of binaries, we give it the benefit of the doubt as we lay our bodies over the top & swing ourselves to the other side, trusting we’ll land safely on the ground.
