I'm glad to be back in Tucson.
I also want to add my thanks to the Poetry Center,
University of Arizona press, and to Odilia and Francisco
for editing the Poetry of Resistance anthology.
This is, my teaser.
[LAUGHS]
It's a new poem, I just wrote it.
And it's about the first documented hate crime committed
in the name of Donald Trump.
It was not in Arizona, but rather in Boston, Massachusetts
less than two months after he announced his candidacy.
The characters include two brothers, Scott and Steve
Leader, a homeless Mexican immigrant, Guillermo Rodriguez.
And, of course, Donald Trump himself,
who provides the epigraph.
The title of this poem is, "Not for him,
the fiery lake of the false prophet."
Epigraph.
When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best.
They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime,
they're rapists.
Donald Trump, June 16, 2015.
They woke him up by pissing in his face.
He opened his mouth to scream in Spanish,
so his mouth became a urinal at the ballpark.
Scott and Steve, the Leader brothers,
celebrating a night at Fenway where
the Red Sox beat the Indians.
And a rookie named Rodriguez, spun the seams on his change
up to hypnotize the tribe.
Later that night, Steve urinated on the door of his cell.
And Scott told the cops why they did it.
"Donald Trump is right, all these illegals
need to be deported."
He was a Mexican, in a sleeping bag outside JFK station
on a night in August.
So they called him a wetback, and emptied their bladders
in his hair.
In court, the lawyers spoke his name.
Guillermo Rodriguez, immigrant with papers.
Crop-picker in the fields, trader of bottles and cans
collected in his cart.
Two strangers squashed the cartilage in his nose,
like a can drained of beer.
In dreams, he would remember the shoes digging
into his rib cage.
The pole raked repeatedly across the cheekbones,
and up raised knuckles the high five over his body.
"Donald Trump is right," said Scott.
And Trump said, "The people who are following me,
are very passionate."
His hands fluttered as he spoke.
A demagogue's hands, no blood under the fingernails, no whiff
of urine to scrub away.
He would orchestrate the chant of, "Build that wall,"
at rally after rally, bellowing till the blood rushed
to his face.
Red as a demagogue in the grip of masturbatory dreams.
A tribute to the new conquistador.
The wall raised up by Mexican hands, Mexican hair,
and fingernails bristling in the brick, Mexican blood swirling
in the cement like raspberry syrup on a vanilla sundae.
On the Cinco de Mayo, he leered over a taco bowl
at Trump Tower.
Not for him, the fiery lake of the false prophet
reddening his ruddy face.
Not for him, the devils of Puritan imagination,
shrieking in a foreign tongue and climbing
in the window like the immigrant demons
he conjures for the crowd.
Not even for him, 10,000 years of the Leader brothers
streaming a fountain of piss in his face,
as he sputters forever.
For him, hell is a country where a man in a hard hat paving
the road to JFK station sees Guillermo and dials 911.
Hell is a country where EMTs kneel,
to wrap a blanket around the shivering shoulders
of Guillermo and wipe his face clean.
Hell is a country where the nurse at the emergency room,
hangs a morphine drip for Guillermo
so he can go back to sleep.
2000 miles away, someone leaves a trail
of water bottles in the desert for the border crossing
of the next Guillermo.
We smuggle ourselves across the border of a demagogue's dreams.
Confederate generals on horseback
tumble one by one into the fiery lake of false prophets.
Into the fiery lake crumbles the demolished wall.
Thousands stand sledgehammers in hand to await the bull horns,
and handcuffs await the trembling revolvers.
In the full moon of the flashlight,
every face interrogates the interrogator.
In the full moon of the flashlight,
every face is the face of Guillermo.