Recognizing people

When the building where I live was erected in the 70s as housing for elders with low income, the surrounding area was zoned industrial, home to maple, spruce, and gingko trees and to warehouses, lumber yards, and quonset huts full of plumbing supplies. I loved the funk, the broken windows, the rolls of cable and stacks of pallets that were still here when I took up residence in 2008.

Now the maples are gone, and where they blazed, we have massive luxury housing blocks, many still under construction (Extra). Thousands are at work building them. There is more “diversity” in that workforce than there will ever be in the apartments they are building. Brown workers, Black workers, I listen and hear a fugue of voices in languages not English. 

I’ve been reading a superb collection of poetry called Ink Knows No Borders: Poems of the immigrant and Refugee Experience (2019). Each poem packs a punch, has a twist you don’t expect, tells a truth you want to laugh or cry (or both) about. Read it if you can. You will feel you just spent weeks sitting in silence, observing Homeland Security at work. At the end, in an Afterword, Emtithal Mahmoud writes, 

“Being a refugee is a phase, but being an advocate for change, that’s something we should all be in every walk of life, in every country, in every place. You don’t have to go on UN missions…. You just have to reach out and recognize people…. The simplest and deepest way to stand in solidarity with someone is to recognize them” (142).

Here are two stanzas from Emtithal Mahmoud’s poem in the book, entitled “Mama”:

When I was 7, my mama cradled bullets in the billows of her robes.
That same night, she taught me how to get gunpowder out of cotton
with a bar of soap.
Years later when the soldiers held her at gunpoint
and asked her who she was
She said, I am a daughter of Adam, I am a woman, who the hell are you?

*****

The woman who raised me
turned and said, don’t be scared
I’m your mother, I’m here, I won’t let them through. 
My mama gave me conviction.
Women like her
Inherit tired eyes,
Bruised wrists and titanium-plated spines.
The daughters of widows wearing the wings of amputees
Carry countries between their shoulder blades.