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The Labor of a Dream

9/4/2017

2 Comments

 
The Labor of a Dream
by Aida Salazar
Monday, September 4, 2017


We come from a long line of dreamers
Bracero blood braced itself
inside our veins
generations of the ebb
        and go
    run and 
come back tumble
    of migrant imaginings 
for a better life
an un-violated life
a hunger-less life

abundance measured 
        by the cracks on 
    our dishpan hands
    our book-filled hands
    our toiling hands
    our back broken hands
bounty in belly hearts full 
        despite Yankee spit on our faces
        or the swollen echos of “beaner” 
        bleached into our skin

grandfathers         grandmothers
    mothers     fathers
        children
    us

lawful before laws 
abiding instead by the prophecy that 
we would wander back across 
lands our ancestors once abandoned
    survival etched into every impossible day
inside this US where we’ve
slept and awoken to 
loves long lost 
    to customs 
    to family 
    to earth 
between barbed wire
     deserts and the greatness of 
a river now red with our blood

Our futures fade into longing
to stay, to ignore the mandate
to return to the place
where we are further unknown
where not all is pristine 
like mountain 
like spring
like memory.

We remain, deemed dreamers
denounced for dreaming
inside the vacuum of history, erased
where we must yet again fight
for the light to be human
to fulfill the furies of
our expected failures 
the pains of the gutters of the margin
    to tear open the minds of those
who wish to see us vanished 
    to rise
    to be seen as citizen
    to be read 
    as always having belonged. 




This was written on Labor Day 2017 as the government deliberates over the fate of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). If ended, 800,000 registered undocumented immigrants stand to be deported. 
2 Comments
Sophia K Denis Tripaldi link
9/4/2017 10:23:39 pm

Tears for all that was, and what will be. Brava. Love. Hope....

Reply
Eva Martinez
9/6/2017 06:38:00 am

Beautiful in its dreamer voice and in its call to action.

Reply



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    @mimawrites

    Good excavation at work here... thank you for paying witness.  To see my older blog you can visit: www.blogamama.blogspot.com 

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