​The Labor of a Dream

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 deliberated over the fate of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). If ended, 800,000 registered undocumented immigrants stand to be deported.