ALT Salt of the Earth In a blurry photo from my first trip to Poland at 19, me and my godmother, one of my mother’s ten siblings, are laughing together, a thousand feet into the earth, in a 13th century chapel made entirely of salt. Sculptures carved of rock salt, rock salt chandeliers, a rock salt Last Supper.     In childhood, she was one of many names.     A voice on the phone. A formal exchange.   Table salt was made there from the upwelling brine. Upwelling the closest thing  resembling a wall in water.   *                                                           I feared the door. Someone coming to take my parents away.       Illegals—Taking American jobs—   In classroom debates about immigration,                I kept quiet.      *     Watching my godmother watch her grandchildren running the edges of the creek I wanted to call a river. Slicing bugs from mushrooms picked before dawn.

ALT Dropping the slivers quick into buckets. Asking when will I have children, and haven’t I had enough school already, and how is it that we have so much debt in America?                               *   Shielded by whiteness, assumed to be documented.                                                                                Threaten the economy—One out of every 12 newborns—   * 
In another aunt's kitchen, over rosehip tea, she said I wasn’t as spoiled as they’d expected, for an amerykanka. I was proud, anddevastated to be called American.   *                               Providing an advantage to family members seeking to secure citizenship— Silence both protected and betrayed. *   At 22, running up a blur of pines, beyond my uncle’s turkeys and geese, to where my mama grew up picking blueberries, I planted a little tree. Where I’m invited to return.   *   The difference between a river and a creek is that from a creek, no new branches are formed. Anchor baby, n. Offensive