Siberian squill
2026 José Felipe Ozuna

I learn, is the name for the purple
flowers I’ve seen sprouting
in Minneapolis yards this spring.

A little folded bell.
Its chime & charm 
yet to unfurl from its stamen.

It is March. Spring. 
In December in November
October September and for years

ICE has been in the city.
For months I’d awake
awaiting news of who’d been

taken from the street and how
afraid I should be of seeing.
The siberian squill is,

although beautiful,
an invasive species.
Hard to get rid of. Dominating

local flowers. Suffocating
what’s already there. 
I understand this language.

I understand too the spectacle
with which we make it known
what we do not welcome.

To see WANTED posters
asking for the removal
of invasive plants.

To see WANTED posters
asking for the removal
of my neighbors.

Of biography I’ll offer only
that I am not of this country.
I understand the language

that privileges the local
to the invasive, to the immigrant.
The whole mission of the winter

to get rid of us who seem
to have no claim to belonging.
The whole mission of America.

How much 
is beauty
worth in the presence

of the brutal? I do not know
beyond the fact that it
was on a walk with my friend

in the city where devastation’s
crust remains layers deep
I noticed these flowers and 

their beauty, that even
inside this terror I’ve been
able to find, to make

something, some words
on a page, and chosen
to share them with you.

If the question is
What do we do now?
the answer will lie

in the language, the syntax,
the arrangement of people
choosing to move each day

among and with each other.
What comes next will be written
with our bodies. We will

stand and dot the green 
lawns with a color 
there’s no word for, yet.