I like this line:"we don't mean you" and "you're not like them"

Boy do they love to back peddle or feign while they are trying to stab you in the back.

I've been "lurking" for a while. You're blog is very inspiring.

thank you, georgina. it's good to see ya.

I really like the alien thing. Of course everyone knows that alien as it relates to the nation, and alien as it relates to extraterrestrials are supposed to be different things, but given the situation, there's certainly a sly resonance between the two.

And of course, legal or illegal, you're still an alien. And if you are by chance not an alien, you can simply be a nonalien.

"resonance?" no, i'd say it's being used by many in just the same way. something "alien" to our understanding. something not human, and not deserving of equal consideration. i wish "everyone knew," but too many use ALIEN to turn someone into something they feel okay about killing, jailing, or treating cruelly. with no understanding of the full context or history of the situation. it's a label that turns someone into nothing.

this is a fantastic poem, nez. and I love your "alien" graphic as well.

guh, I sound like I'm just gushing over good poetry rather than... feeling you. bleah. *insert better comment here*

ah, hell, trin. that'll work for me! gracias!

:) de nada.

I was thinking about the word "aliens" the other day... something, I can't remember what, on a Greenwald comment thread brought it up.

A number of years back I was in LA visiting my brother and was talking to one of his friends (a Latino who had been in the US for a while). Somehow we got to talking about family, so I showed him a photo of my then teenage daughter and said something about "kids turn into aliens when they hit their teens, you never know *what* they are going to do next."

Me, I associated the word "aliens" with creatures from outer space, but whoa! did it hit a nerve with him. "So THAT'S what you think of us aliens, we are like children!" he says (or something similar) and I'm saying "no no, I meant like someone from space!" while he sweeps out, never to speak to me again.

I, of course, thought he overreacted (although I did laugh at myself because of how familiar *that* sounded), especially considering the circumstances of my visit, but still... I got a good lesson that while I had mostly one reference for the word, he had quite another, no doubt having lived it and had it used against him for at least as long as he'd been in the US (and quite possibly before, when applying for visas and so on).

Anyway, it's such a terrible word to actually apply to people - whether in official communication or just casual conversation. And it's no doubt intentional, that... just another way to make sure people are quite thoroughly and officially othered and, considering our general cultural references in the US, quite literally dehumanized.

Wonderful and wrenching poem.

thank you nanette.