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.