BY IVAN HOBSON

Jorge’s fingerprints have been taken

by the miles of bricks

that have passed through his hands

one at a time.

Worn as beach glass is worn,

through the uncounted waves of friction,

through the walls and hedges he builds

to keep things in, or keep things out—

Not for national tides of countries,

but for the ripples of ivy and roses,

the dogs who long to drift

with the moon.

His overalls and beard dusted red,

his boots spotted with mortar,

his three decades across the Rio Grande

without fingerprints.

Ivan Hobson is an MFA graduate from San Francisco State University. Along with teaching English at Diablo Valley College, he is also a multigenerational machinist who works at a shipyard. Ivan’s poetry has appeared in publications including, the North American Review, The Malahat Review, Hunger Mountain, as well as Ted Kooser and The Poetry Foundation’s American Life in Poetry.

Process Note: Setting a stone retaining wall at my uncle’s house led to a memory of a stonemason that I worked for in my teenage years. Since bricklayers often have no discernible fingerprints, and since my memory of the man was decades old and faded—the poem became an exploration of identity in an American landscape. The shameful-border-wall with Mexico, the horrible political rhetoric, the attacks on Dreamers… all of it influenced this exploration of identity.