​​Queries - Virtual Worship for White Friends Confronting Racism
​​Resources for newcomers: 
​​What happens in Quaker worship?  
​​White Friends Confronting Racism Worship Guide 
​​What are queries?   
​​

​​3/27 & 28/2025

​​ICE Agents Storm My Porch

​​By Maria Melendez Kelson
​​The Indiscriminate Citizenry of Earth
​​are out to arrest my sense of being a misfit.
​​“Open up!” they bellow,
​​hands quiet before my door
​​that’s only wind and juniper needles, anyway.
​​
​​You can’t do it, I squeak from inside.
​​You can’t make me feel at home here
​​in this time of siege for me and mine, mi raza.
​​Legalized suspicion of my legitimacy
​​is now a permanent resident in my gut.
​​
​​“Fruit of the prickly pear!” they swear,
​​striding up to my table
​​to juice me a glass of pink nectar.
​​They’ve brought welcome baskets
​​stuffed with proof I’m earthling.
​​
​​From under a gingham cover,
​​I tug a dark feather
​​iridescing green — cohering
​​to “magpie” thought,
​​to memory’s chatter,
​​to mind. Mine.
​​
​​And here they have my mind translated
​​into a slate-surfaced pond, which
​​vibrates in the shape
​​of a cottonwood’s autumn molt,
​​which trees me to dirt, which soils me
​​heat & freeze —
​​
​​But you’ll always be
​​one definitive document short! I complain.
​​Doubts can forever outstrip
​​your geo-logic.
​​
​​For which they produce
​​a lock of my natal dust,
​​bronzed
​​to the fluttering fiber