And I'm from Minneapolis, Minnesota,
which has been in the news headlines for all
the wrong reasons this last year.
So this is a poem about our ICE occupation
that happened in February.
It is dedicated to everyone in our Twin Cities community who
really stood up and stood together to say,
this will not happen on our land anymore.
Get out.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
Woo!
Yes.
[LAUGHS]
It doesn't have a title yet, but it starts like this.
"Today, I am woke Instacart.
I back my Mazda up to the locked doors of La Vaquita.
Quick load, easy out, boxes of formula masa and a Rosca de
Reyes cake,
Tricking my car's sensors into believing I
carry unseatbelted passengers.
I will not compare these rattling plastic bags to ghosts.
I will not privilege fear.
The wind will not blow this cake from the roof of my car,
And I will not allow any orange to escape,
And wallow in some hateful pothole,
Glistening with ice, mud, and glass.
All over the city, we cross slick berms with full arms.
We memorize emergency contacts, fidget the plastic whistle,
Praise our hypervigilance at night,
then curse it early morning.
My mom tells me some people write these addresses down
on toilet paper,
Then swallow them if ICE pulls them over.
But I just write down turn by turn instructions
in a small notebook,
So I can put my phone on airplane mode,
For whatever small safety that grants us.
Because I cannot be followed back to La Vaquita,
Where a round of tamales for volunteers are steaming,
Where Paloma handwrites grocery orders in a hot pink composition
notebook,
And where abuelas shopping for essentials
Are ushered into the store by freshly minted bodyguards,
Skipping their jobs in data entry or project management,
Or sales, plumbing, grant writing.
Back to the market for my second room,
I tell Paloma I will be back for that Labubu piñata
For my housewarming party at the stucco house
I intend to buy a few blocks from where
Renee Good was murdered,
Where lampposts are stapled and ribboned into memorials
For kidnapped neighbors, mostly children.
I can't imagine what you're going through,
my mother-in-law says,
While I sit here in lily white Bloomington.
But I have been so near to her condo,
Delivering that Three Kings cake to a construction company
Near the Dairy Queen headquarters.
I have fidgeted for too long at the doors of Southgate.
Over pizza, we tell her how school
buses full of supplies and food
Buffalo around my spouse's workplace,
Where Somali and Hmong and Spanish
are spoken with more frequency than English.
Hours later, after my North Minneapolis deliveries,
Julio Sosa-Celis is shot in the leg on 24th Street,
And I wonder if I touched his hands
passing the box of formula,
Or if I passed an unmarked SUV on the way there.
I kiss my date over the duffel bag
Of first aid supplies she loads into my car,
Warns me I might be stingrayed if I park at her house
for too long.
I wonder if I'm being tracked into the Mall of America parking
lot,
By Coresight, an Israeli AI security system,
Or the guards trained by a former member of the IDF,
As I drive a love to make out on the Hawaii floor on their lunch
break.
I want to believe we bless this dirt beneath concrete
with our sweat
But neighbors are near whose pleasures have been confiscated,
Who shiver in hydraulic chambers of breath
Near Fort Snelling, near Bdote.
It is a hell of a time to ramp up my polyamorous life.
I debate my risk tolerance for catfishing off-duty agents
And abandon them in a cornfield or some yet dug bottomless pit.
But my risk tolerance is low.
Detention and data centers proposed along
corridors of MMIW billboards.
Is it safe to take my poetry students to the conservatory,
To the art museum?
Frantically calling my mom in Duluth
To see if she has a state or tribal ID.
She tells me about the time border control
Harassed her brown skin when she was unhoused.
Asshole, she hisses,
Did your SNAP come through, I ask,
My muscles aching with the weight of so many tortillas.
Don't worry about me, she says.
If they haven't killed me yet,
I can survive anything.
To be homeless on your own land,
Then told you do not belong here,
This isn't new.
History falls through us,
Or we fall through history.
Our heaving bodies,
Your pleasure, my pleasure,
Your pain, my pain,
If only we are open to receive it.
Maybe while I still steer the direction of this body
I am trying to hold as many people as I can."
Miigwech.
[CHEERS, APPLAUSE]