Immigration & Customs Enforcement
S1639 www.ice.gov
by Karen Douglass
Whose idea to chill our borders?
Metal badge — ICE Officer — not real
gold pinned to a dark unifrom.
I cannot explain ICE,
never had to run, duck and cover,
to harvest lettuce or grapes,
put on a nanny dress, hide
my face in false papers.
Border crossing is a curse;
dying of poverty is a curse.
Twelve foot fences
make fourteen foot ladders.
ICE — to kill.
Karen Douglass: Her books include Red Goddess Poems; Bones in the Chimney (fiction); Green Rider, Thinking Horse (non-fiction); Sostenuto, (poems) and The Great Hunger (poems), which is available from Plain View Press (2009). Individual poems have appeared in a wide variety of publications.