Migration & Displacement Series: Poems by Celeste Caesora Gzollnic
Editor’s note:
We are ending our Migration & Displacement series with three wonderful poems by Celeste Caesora Gzollnic. We hope you have enjoyed this series as much as we have, and we urge you to stand with immigrants in the United States and abroad. Remember: migrants not only develop amazing communities in our country—they also fill our art galleries, bookstores, and museums. Art is inherently political. And art is for everyone.
—Erin Hoskins, Art & Blog Editor
mother- -|body|- -terrain
you
my pathogen
have breached the sovereign
boundaries of my body, trespassed
the connective muscular and epithelial
tissues, to suture yourself to my decidua wall
violated the wombthreaded orifices, of my spiral
arteries, paralyzed the migration, of my natural killer
cells defense mechanisms, to imprison my
immunity, suppress my response
systems, so I cannot
recognize you
as enemy
reject
and expel you
as the parasite
you are, as you assault
the trophoblast, blastocyst,
arrest my antibodies, siphon
my blood and breath, divest my
nutrients, feast on my depletion, leach
the calcium from my bones to build yours
occupy what space once existed, between my
used and abused organs, immobilize and overpower me
infect me, injure me irreparably, although I am your host organism
I know you can kill me, while your survival depends on what you can ravage
from me, the only antidote to this suffering from your invasion, the rupture that will
sever the tumor of you into animal, leave me with the cavity of your exoskeletal ash in
my microchimeric marrow, permanently disfigured by your extraction, still, one day
it will be me who will apologize to your 4000 years ancient y-chromosome
who survived iterations upon iterations of colonization, while your
other half—the viscera who homed you, your blood, your breath
the language whose incantatory inflections first soothed
you—embodied the skin of your colonizer, how
to mend and amend, salve our birthmarked
scars, in reparation for how much
violence we each have
forced, upon the
other
Value
19 years in this country
19 years since his mother has touched his face
19 years since he’s breathed in the sigh of his father
19 years worth of tax returns he has filed
19 years since he’s slept to the song of sibling’s laughter
19 years of paychecks deducting equal taxes for
0 benefits of any kind in return
14 years old when he journeyed
14+ people relied on his survival
2 parents
4 grandparents
8 siblings (+3 who did not survive)
+ countless aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews, neighbors, friends, [ ]…
3+ ways he was almost killed along the way
1st: numb limbs piled in a faceless van of breathless bodies
2nd: running from bullets shot by border patrol agents
3rd: lost without water feet falling to desert floor
20,000 $ + interest = the equivalent cost to cross today
14 hour days
7 days a week
< than minimum wage exploited in hazardous jobs
2 hands swollen with scars splitting arroyos across calloused knuckles
0 criminal history
0 power to vote
1 x each week he bows his head in church candlelight
365 x a year he bends before our bed to pray for you
2 knees weathered by wood warped under this weight
1 citizen spouse
2 citizen children
3 USCIS applications filed
0 permit possibility of a green card let alone citizenship
18,000+ $ he has paid to profit institutions publicizing their aim to
4 years & we have only begun this incalculable wait for + with
0 protection from detention and/or deportation just
> stones upon stones leading to blockades of > steps like stone
0 possible ways to have migrated legally then
0 possible pathways to legal status now
65,735 + families detained illegally today
>1 billion $ in CoreCivic + GEO Group’s blood-lobbied revenue, just last quarter
___ age our children will be when we can finally tell them our family is safe?
For W.D.C
from land / starved of gold / maize / exported to feed / others instead
you / teacher of / modern myth / myriad languages / left unnamed
unpaved roads / of seedling / souls where / walking everywhere
everyone / knew your / family / name
to land mapped / with hollow / shells of lead / sanguinary sanctimony
of borders barreling / grace falling / like garbage / recoiled against
graffiti / in their scope / illiterate / trilingual line cook / exploited for
this economy
when you die / in a place / without documentation / how does / one
nation / send you / home / without owing / answers? / your community
wired / donations / with none / ourselves / to your mother shroud
unweaving / weeping on / a phone screen / livestream
my love / watches you / at rest / arms crossed / eyes closed / driftwood
floating down / a current of hands / in a church / coffin / your cheeks
once dough kneaded dimples / below fortress forest gaze / now frigid
stones / coagulated under / river rippled indigo / my love / remembers
sharing your bed / feasting on / joy / unaccompanied youth / american
junk / food / my love watches / but I / can’t
remember / what I last said / to you / when you left / by cab / for the
hotel / and I / found / a NYC diner / spiked my milkshake / with
smuggled minis / and cried for / Argentina / how I wished / you could
see them / finally lift that cup / for you / now / are you sacred
subterranean / moonsilver sliver / made into star / or aqueous beneath
Xibalba?
every night / after work / angry / at you / for leaving / I drive by / your
bar / dream of / entering / ordering you / a boilermaker / just to pour it
out / for you / or leave / it on the bar / with a note / conversing with
your spirit / muzzled by / silencer / but I always / go home / instead
and now / I can’t remember / your favorite beer / your skeleton / neck
and arm / weapons of bones / chambers becoming / rooted
constellations / the powdered residue / of windlost insects / then earth
once again / jaguar god / with jade / in / your jaw
Celeste Caesora Gzollnic is a writer, editor, and educator who believes in language, liberation, sovereignty of body, and freedom of movement. Find me @celestecaesura.bsky.social, with kin words at Redivider Journal.