BY MEHRNOOSH TORBATNEJAD
Carmen Sandiego Reacts to the Travel Ban
No different than how she has always traveled,
knows to make a human less human
you call them by a thing that doesn't exist, so
she’s never in a space long enough to be deemed alien;
makes a game from the escape—
the elegant taunting of claiming your city her name
though elsewhere she was born; a turf intruder
with no passport, why apply for one if possession
only calcifies borders, if papers are the breadcrumb
trail always to capture; so instead she enters with the tip
of her color shadow, loots your country of everything
she doesn’t need; see, this is not about thievery,
this is the joy of reclaiming, the thrill of ripping smiles
from paintings, pocketing the heat from flames,
keys and music notes, what good is a native’s job
when you can take the recipes and controls;
you would think she, like the rest, was a holy grail,
the way patrollers lust after her with handcuffs and rope
when she retreats, off to Afghanistan or Iran, Mexico
and Morocco; tell me which one of you would even
reach for a map if it weren’t to chase her,
which one of you would mark a globe if not for the names
of do-not-fly lists; she knew long ago the rights
you inscribed do not include her, that immunity
is a delusion, so she alters her tone when you tap
her telephones, and gloats elusive when she doesn’t sound
metal detectors; so, call her villain, call her enemy
when this body is the one you cannot occupy;
call her criminal, call her spy, call her mastermind
when she outwits your agencies, and know
we are willing to forgive her felonies, knowing
what you call illegal is the act of fleeing an oppressor,
knowing what you call most wanted
is a pseudonym for unwanted;
so, a runaway sneering at despots for hobby
is the reprisal the rest of us have waited for,
so we marvel at the abduction of headwaters,
let her take the rivers, the ceilings and columns,
let her steal everything beneath the wide brim
of what was taken and renamed;
we pardon her; we know what it’s like
to hide but leave a trickling trace of what’s been sown,
we know the blood that she bleeds, she makes sure
to wear visible neck to toe like a trench coat
Mehrnoosh Torbatnejad was born and raised in New York. Her poetry has appeared in The Missing Slate, Passages North, HEArt Journal Online, Pinch Journal, and is forthcoming in Painted Bride Quarterly. She is the poetry editor for Noble / Gas Qtrly, and a Best of the Net, Pushchart Prize, and Best New Poets nominee. She currently lives in New York where she practices matrimonial law.