a border of stories we already know by heart

A sketch from JM Design Studio's proposal in Phase One, depicting a strand of trees connected by hammocks running along the border.  The Wall by Anita Endrezze (Yaqui) Build a wall of saguaros, butterflies, and bones of those who perished in the desert. A wall of worn shoes, dry water bottles, poinsettias. Construct it of gilded or crazy house mirrors so some can see their true faces. Build a wall of revolving doors or revolutionary abuelas. Make it as high as the sun, strong as tequila. Boulders of sugar skulls. Adobe or ghosts. A Lego wall or bubble wrap. A wall of hands holding hands, hair braided from one woman to another, one country to another. A wall made of Berlin. A wall made for tunneling. A beautiful wall of taco trucks. A wall of silent stars and migratory songs. This wall of solar panels and holy light, panels of compressed cheetos, topped not by barbed wire but sprouting avocado seeds, those Aztec testicles. A wall to keep Us in and Them out. It will have faces and heartbeats. Dreams will be terrorists. The Wall will divide towns, homes, mountains, the sky that airplanes fly through with their potential illegals. Our wallets will be on life support to pay for it. Let it be built of guacamole so we can have a bigly block party. Mortar it with xocoatl, chocolate. Build it from coyote howls and wild horses drumming across the plains of Texas, from the memories of hummingbird warriors and healers. Stack it thick as blood, which has mingled for centuries, la vida. Dig the foundation deep. Create a 2,000 mile altar, lit with votive candles for those who have crossed over defending freedom under spangled stars and drape it with rebozos, and sweet grass. Make it from two way windows: the wind will interrogate us, the rivers will judge us, for they know how to separate and divide to become whole. Pink Floyd will inaugurate it. Ex-Presidente Fox will give it the middle finger salute. Wiley Coyote will run headlong into it, and survive long after history forgets us. Bees will find sand-scoured holes and fill it with honey. Heroin will cover it in blood. But it will be a beautiful wall. A huge wall. Remember to put a rose-strewn doorway in Nogales where my grandmother crossed over, pistols on her hips. Make it a gallery of graffiti art, a refuge for tumbleweeds, a border of stories we already know by heart.   from: Ursula K. Le Guin’s Blog Copyright © 2017 by Anita Endrezze see also: otherborderwall other borderwall project