Teething Borders
“Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition. The prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants.”
—Gloria Anzaldúa
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987)
~
Our daughter won’t stop crying,
so we massage her red, swollen gums
with our fingers. We sing: “Row, row, row
your boat, gently down the stream,
merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is
but a dream.” On the news,
a makeshift boat carrying refugees
capsized in the Mediterranean.
Those with life jackets float like bright
yellow teeth. The others: swallowed
by the sea’s territorial mouth.
How many fled thirst, the vanishing
of Lake Chad, the floods in East Africa?
How many escaped Boko Haram,
poverty, and war? How many more
will be desiccated by the Sahara desert,
or macerated by traffickers at Libya’s
salivating shore? How many will survive
only to be gnawed by Europe’s jaws?
Our daughter won’t stop crying,
so we give her a teething ring
to chew. We sing: “Row, row, row
your boat, gently down the stream,
merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is
but a dream.” On the news, refugees
from Central and South America
are detained at the border and separated
from their children—some are so young
they still have their baby teeth. Others
are unaccompanied. How many fled
drug cartels and abusive men,
maquiladoras and drought? How many
more will be devoured by La Bestia,
dehydrated by the Sonoran desert,
and torn apart by La Migra’s incisors?
How many will survive only to be spit out
from America’s rotting cavities?
Our daughter won’t stop crying,
so we give her a cold bottle to nurse.
We sing: “Row, row, row your boat,
gently down the stream, merrily,
merrily, merrily, merrily, life is
but a dream.” On the news, Trump
inspects border wall prototypes.
They say, more than half of all border
walls on earth have been built since 2001,
“justified” by the wars on terror.
But refugees are not the true terror.
The true terror is that 34,000 people
are forced from their homes every day,
and by the end of this year, 65 million
will be uprooted, and in the coming years,
climate change will displace millions more—
half will be children. Refugees are not
the true terrorists. The true terrorists
are nations that create the migrant crisis,
and nations that refuse to offer refuge
(often, they are one and the same).
Our daughter won’t stop crying,
so we cradle her in our arms, skin to skin,
and sing: “Row, row, row your boat,
gently down the stream, merrily, merrily,
merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”
When she finally closes her eyes,
we lay her down in bed and surround
her with pillows. On the news,
a “caravan of migrants” approaches
our teething borders. Let us not
turn them away. Let us bridge
them across the wounded borderlands
until those once forbidden are now family, until those once prohibited
are now protected. Let us build
a tender country, where the only
document needed for citizenship
is a dream of sanctuary.
Craig Santos Perez is an indigenous Pacific Islander (Chamoru) from Guahan (Guam). He is the author of four collections of poetry and the co-editor of four anthologies. He works as an associate professor in the English department at the University of Hawaiʻi, Mānoa, where he teaches Pacific literature, creative writing, and eco-poetry.