my facebook uncle
Aimee Penna
my facebook uncle
blames hillary
blames alyssa milano
my facebook uncle
posts videos
of mexicans
trying to climb the wall
there's a snappy
soundtrack
friends respond
with emojis
tearing up
with laughter
my facebook uncle has two
bright-eyed twin
granddaughters
who were born here
so they're doing
nothing wrong
my facebook uncle has a heart
full of love
i cannot reconcile
this fact
against his post
of a woman,
a mother impaled
to death
after falling
from the border wall
my facebook uncle doesn't
find this funny
he posts it as
a lesson
a warning
to do things
legally
it's safer, he says
but safety
and comfort
do not push
people to board
rafts, ford rivers
or to scale walls
my facebook uncle must
know this
to be true
or maybe he
is running away
from this kind
of knowing,
desperately
toward another
kind of knowing
it feels solid
and sure as
a wall whose
complexities
lie beyond,
and they're hard
to like or to
love
and no emoji seems
quite right
Aimee Penna’s poems have appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Hawaii Pacific Review, and Whiskey Island, among others. She holds an MFA from Bennington Writing Seminars and has been an editorial assistant at The American Poetry Review. She recently moved to San Antonio with her husband and two kooky cats.