It’s not who gets in
but what gets out
that’s the problem.
No matter how often
Border Control turns away Canadian women
on their way to march with their sisters
because they are not T-Rump supporters —
No matter how often they try to justify
holding a five-year-old alone,
in a big airport, away from his mother
because even at his age, you never know, right?
No matter what wall, what ban, what policy —
Word gets out, and
words get out, too.
Some of those words,
no doubt spoken by Border Control
(how 1984-esque that sounds!)
have flowed in a steady stream, northward,
like sand nigger, terrorist, jihadi,
Islamic extremist, Not Like Us.
Last night, those words
murdered six people in a Quebec City mosque
while they were praying
for their brothers and sisters
trapped in the no man’s land
between one country that wants to kill them
and the other that is sure
they want to kill us.
This kind of border, impermeable to love,
leaks hate and death freely,
until there is a moat of it around us
even we inside can’t cross.
