Hello.
Everybody hear me OK?
Yes.
Good.
All right.
It is always interesting to be back here in Tucson,
because I fucking crossed the border through here--
[LAUGHTER]
--and I'll start with this one.
"Let Me Try Again.
I could bore you with the sunset, the way water tasted
after so many days without it, the trees, the breed of dogs.
But I can't say there were 40 people when
we found the ranch with the thin, white man, his dogs,
and his shotgun.
Until this 5:00 AM, I couldn't remember there
were only five or seven people.
We have separated by the palo verdes.
"We," meaning four people, not 40--
the rest, I don't know.
They weren't there when the thin white man
let us drink from a hose while pointing his shotgun.
In pocho Spanish, he told us si correr, perros atacar.
If run dogs trained attack.
When la migra arrived, an officer
who probably called himself Hispanic at best, not
"Mexicano," like we called him, said buenos noches and gave us
pan dulce y chocolate.
Procedure says he should have taken us back
to the station, checked our fingerprints, et cetera.
He must have remembered his family over the border,
or the border coming over them, because he
drove us to the border and told us "next time rest at least
five days.
Don't trust anyone calling themselves coyotes.
Bring more tortillas, sardines, Alhambra."
He knew we would try again and again, like everyone does."
This is my second time since 1999 that I'm in town,
and it's the first time that I have a green card.
Before that I was undocumented, and it
would have been too dangerous for me to be here because we're
so close to the border.
And I just want to acknowledge that, as I'm speaking,
there are people trying to cross the border,
I don't know, 30 miles away from here, 60 miles--
I don't fucking know.
And so finally I went with somebody
that's kind of like this poem, it's based on a true attempt
by crossing the border.
And there are some nice border patrol agents out there--
they're very few.
And then I went with a friend of mine
who is an ex-border patrol agent,
and I didn't really know.
There's also a poem here about saguaro,
which now I think it's not true, because where I crossed,
I finally understood that it's in between Naco and Agua
Prieta, so that was grateful.
But then I went back to the Mexican side,
and because of the new policy that Trump just
passed yesterday, on the way back,
there was a Honduran kid, a teenager, trying to get here,
but they wouldn't allow him to even come and declare or claim
refugee status.
And so that's interesting of being here,
and I hope no one in this room is
an asshole towards immigrants, and that we all believe
that we are human beings.
And it's very strange that I am here in front of you,
and now you're listening to me.