"Borders"-Lois Hayna

Ramsha Khan, Nimra Elahi, Fatima Elahi

ENGL 284 – Jacobs

Keeping Still p.56

What types of definitions can the word “border” have?

Does this reference really frame the poem for you?

Where do you imagine this taking

place?

Who is the speaker?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lKZqqSI9-s

Paragraph 1

Sometimes a border sign‟s not

immediately visible

or it‟s printed in a language

you don‟t read

and you find yourself across

And into a foreign place without quite

knowing how you got there.

Without deciding, really, to go.

Paragraph 2

Dealing, as you now must,

in a language

you have yet to learn,

the greatest puzzle of all is how

you could slip right across

without challenge or passport,

but turn to leave

and the border snarls with guns

Paragraph 3

You know you‟ll never feel

really at home here,

and you miss the lost easy ways,

but you look, as you must,

for some shelter.

Resigned, you settle in.

o “…you find yourself across and into a foreign place

without quite knowing how you got there.”

o …you could slip right across without challenge or

passport, but leave and the border snarls with guns

o “You know you‟ll never feel really at home here”

o “…lost easy ways”

1. Can be viewed through the natives‟ lens

2. Can be viewed through the lens of

immigrants/those not „from this country‟

Which one do YOU think it is?

Seems sad

Doesn‟t seem like it happened.

Can‟t believe it did.

Begs the question: How could this have happened?