Georgina Marie Guardado
To the Toddler Representing Himself in Immigration Court
It took two days for an Amazon purchase
to reach my office,
a bilingual copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar
for the new group of little ones
who will sit around together
in a circle on a colorful carpet
and be read a story.
Each child will look ahead
to the kind reader, her sweet gestures,
her warm, excited voice
as she turns each vibrant page,
celebrating equally words
printed in English and Spanish,
her brown skin clothed in a purple
floral dress, only softness.
When I see your photo in the news
you are facing a judge
60 years older than you,
alone.
You have no parents beside you.
There are no flowers in this courtroom.
No soft words like
caterpillar or apple or butterfly,
but you are expected to understand
words like “government”, “unaccompanied”,
or “understand.”
You do not even know what a courtroom is.
Dear child, you will never read this.
Your outcome is uncertain, left
to a broken system.
Thoughts and prayers will serve
no purpose.
Still, a space in the colorful circle
will be saved for you,
a gavel replaced by a book.
Reflection Questions:
How have you seen children treated in our immigration systems?
Are there books available in languages other than English in your local schools and libraries?
Compare this poem with "NTA. Notice to Appear" by Carole Chinn-Morales. What are ways that teachers, librarians, neighbors, and bystanders can make a difference.
Georgina Marie Guardado (Latinx, Indigenous, she/her) is the Poet Laureate Emerita of Lake County, CA for 2020-2024, and a Poets Laureate Fellow with The Academy of American Poets. She is the Literacy Program Coordinator for the Lake County Library and Marketing Director for Aunt Lute Books. In her free time, she serves as Board President of the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference. She has received support from The Academy of American Poets, Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference, Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, Hugo House, and SF Writing Salon. Her work has appeared in Poets.org, Gulf Coast Journal, Yellow Medicine Review, Two Hawks Quarterly, and more. She earned her BA in Liberal Studies, Literature and Creative Writing from Antioch University, and her MFA from the Pacific University MFA in Writing Program where she was a scholar of the Kwame Dawes Mapmakers and Master of Fine Arts Merit endowments. She lives in northern California.