There is a boy down the street whose dad can’t emerge from
the basement during the daytime for fear of being deported.
I am not a cop but my white-ness breeds uneasiness.
Young eyes peer precariously at me when he holes up at
our house questioning sanctity, sanity, my sincerity. The same eyes
bridge the gap between his parents: machismo and desperation.
His family from a land where rays of sun illuminate shadowed paths
of blistered hands and greenbacks struggle to find their way home.
Forced into sub-terranean exile for the new crime of a hard day’s work.