Journal of American
Studies of Turkey
and men make borders
without the grace of
nature at their disposal
whose only borders are
lapis
rivers and / lace shorelines
that do more to deck the earth
than to divide it
or nature makes borders of color:
brilliant
yellow sharply divided
from
violent pink on the same petal / of a four-o’clock-flower
or
the vicious purple around / the floppy petals of a white petunia
color-border:
where
colors scream / silently /
but
do not gnaw at each other
and men make borders
where cultures are
meant to fuse
but refuse to stay put
instead they bleed into
each other
cutting deeper and
deeper into the endurance
like barbed wire / wound around tree bark
steel insisting into tree flesh / slowly /
imperceptibly
scab forming /slowly / suturing the gash
until no one knows which is steel, which flesh, which
scab:
a
new texture / a new formation / no longer of the old essence
new
medium / new middle / new identity
this special issue /
then / a homage to chicana/o culture
to remember all borders
/ close by and far away
clumsily drawn by men /
against which many riot on both sides of the border
leaving torn shirts /
and shredded souls
on barbed border wire
leaving a part of one’s
self
on either side / and the mocking line /
“you
are no longer you on the other side”
new
identity / new self /
the
border is the nomansland
where
one is dispelled by what is in one’s back /
unwanted
by what lies ahead
shaped
by no description / fluid / uncertain: destabilized / see Rafael Ramirez, next
page /
and the magpies and the
finches
fly back and forth
honoring no borders
mocking baton-holding
border patrol officers
flap wing / soar high / what border?
man-made borders / can’t be seen / with a bird’s eye.
ayþe lahur kýrtunç /
July 18, 2003
Following page:
Abel Ortiz-Acosta,
“Rafael Ramirez was Famous Throughout the Southwest Sector for his Graceful
Agility and Quickness, Chasing Illegal Aliens”
36” X 48”, oil on panel