ICE was on my block yesterday, masked young men with guns driving large vehicles the wrong way up our one-way street. Picture them as a baby, Alison, I tell myself. Picture them being bullied. Picture a parent being cruel to them. Picture them as a small, lonely, scared child. This little routine is my secret weapon for combatting hatred in my own heart, a tried and true way to create empathy. These days, my secret weapon is getting lots of play. It usually works. But not always.

Questionnaire, by Alison McGhee

Where were you when you made the decision to sign
up for ICE?
When you signed the contract, did you picture your
brown niece, the one you taught to skateboard?
Are you picturing her now, as you pull the mask up to
your eyes?
When you think of your great-grandmother as a child,
fleeing the pogroms for life on the Lower East Side,
do you remember how hard she worked?
How young she died?
When you think of your brown niece on the
skateboard you taught her to ride, do you
picture someone with a mask
pulling her off it and zip-tying
her hands?

Where in your body do you feel whatever it is you feel
when you remember the day your brown now-
skateboarding infant niece came home from the
hospital with your sister and her brown husband and
they put her in your arms?
When you think of your brother-in-law now, that
brown man who taught you to play chess and
helped you night after night with your math homework
those years you lived with your sister and him because
your father kept slamming you against the wall, do you
picture someone in a mask yanking him from his car and
slamming him to the ground?
What do you plan to do with your $50,000 signing bonus?
How many masks do you have at home?
How often do you wash them?
Do any of them have blood spots?
How much does a mask cost?

A version of today’s poem will appear in the anthology THE COUNTRY IN THE MIRROR: Poems of Protest and Witness, to be published this year by Rootstock Publisher.
alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter