My name is Podrigotumma and when I was younger I learned a poem in school by the Irish language

poet Moro Wakatsui and in it she speaks about using poetry as a way of revealing the limitations

of the things we say about ourselves as Irish people and as Irish culture.

And it was the first time I came across the idea that poetry could be used to expose the

ways we think about ourselves and to elevate us to something better. I was shocked and amazed

and delighted at the possibility that poetry could do that. Nobody had ever told me before

that you were allowed to do that in poetry.

I'm ending wall by Darrow Alejandro Holness.

If crucified means one has died on the cross, then what is the word in English for a dying

of the crossing between countries? What word describes when a brown woman's dreams of being

something like a white man are killed at the intersection between his dreamt of borders

and his dream come through border patrol? White man, like dead men printed or minted on money

more valuable than the pesos in her purse. White man, like gods on horseback, come to conquer

their India after reading a mistaken map. White man, like the grace of misinterpreted

almonds, turned into a chance for a vicious attack. White man, like buying but outlawing cocaine

to catch the brown man in the crossfire of its trade. White man, like picket fences in award-winning

films about the privilege of being so overprivileged that he yearns for something real.

Something there is that loves a wall, that builds a boundary, that calls the structure

love of country. Something there is that kills those who trespass. Something there is that

buries bodies at a border as foundation stones for yet another wall. But something there is that

doesn't love fathers saying good fences make good neighbors. Something doesn't love a man

carving up a continent and its people to make a new world in the image of old words, like the name

...