LET'S ALL SPEAK SPANISH

by Arlene Weiner 

 

 

Let’s walk up and down
in front of ICE headquarters
speaking Spanish, let’s sing
“La Paloma” or “Guantanamera”
to ICE agents, and if
we don’t know Spanish
let’s sing “Frère Jacques”
or “O Tannenbaum”
or the “Marseillaise”
because will they know?
 
I wish I knew “Santa Lucia,”
a Neapolitan song my father,
an immigrant from Poland,
learned in the greenhorn class,
with which he sang me to sleep,
but instead I can sing “Volare”
or learn a song by Bad Bunny.
 
And if we don’t know any songs
in Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin,
Quechua, Vietnamese, Pashto,
Kreyol, let’s make up a language,
a language nobody understands
or everybody understands
and serenade them,
soothe the savage breasts.

 

Arlene Weiner lives in Pittsburgh, where she is active in community poetry groups. She has been a cardiology technician, a Shakespeare scholar, a den mother, and an editor. Ragged Sky Press has published three collections of her poetry, the most recent More (2022). She also writes plays.

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