They’d Be Safe If They Were Houses

They’d Be Safe If They Were Houses

The United States is always there

to credit itself as savior, - Rowe

Mr. ICE is

the modern fascist,

convenient renovation to an ideology

that claimed to die.

The United States is always there

to credit itself as savior,

the boats it once turned away to other ports

dwindling in the abscess that

fill the space in our minds where

carefully edited history texts place false idols.

Mr. ICE comes for students, to dorm rooms

to trade humans for check marks on paper, 

calligraphy in uniform, a signature more famous

than Hancock’s superfluous lie:

Freedom if you dress in the right suit.

We weren’t told the reaper wears blue and green. 

Mr. ICE places his war crime medals on the mantle,

motions for his children to gaze upon them 

as park goers peer at statues, the four fathers stiff, 

their odor stomped out like unnecessary taxidermies

But we know it’s there

They smell like death.

Is it like a father to rape and beat his children? 

Is that the white man’s burden, to force his own hate down

beneath cuff links that were only fastened to hide the blood?

I think of the clawing hands at wired gates, 

The people sitting in bed thinking it could never be me.

It could be you or it could me.

It’s not though, you assure yourself, and pack your cooler for the beach.

Your silence is padding the lock. 

Mr. ICE moves into my neighbor’s old apartment, 

old as in they raised their kids there and marked their growth on the walls

We see him in the store, fishing for the ripe tomato, 

at church, in the laundromat, in the park, buying paint for the bedroom, 

by the water, rounding his children into a photo, 

selfie stick extended for a large collective grin.

Don’t you know that an abuser always knows how to smile

after he beats his wife?

Or your wife, or your friend, or your kids, or your mother, or someone you don’t know 

who is being dragged off,

deported, a term that means existing is a crime,

arrested, a brand that follows you through the doors of your life.

They’re making room for you, silencers

Your kids will have the best of everything 

as long as they step on someone else.

But these are political issues 

and you’re not political.

There’s the anthem

Stand for the flag, and then tuck in the kids with the dawn’s dimming light.

While you all sleep, the silenced will be slaughtered.

But you can’t hear it

You can’t hear anything 

that isn’t blind, tearing bliss.