Juan Pablo Mobili - Crossing the Border

Juan Pablo Mobili was born in Buenos Aires, and adopted by New York. He’s the Poet Laureate of Rockland County, New York, and his poems have appeared in many journals around the world. He was nominated for the Pushcart Prize several times, and his chapbook Contraband was published in 2022. His current manuscript was a finalist in Lily Poetry Review's 2026 Paul Nemser Prize.

I saved every passport
that I was issued, shown

at one border or another,
wondering each time if

the men who questioned
my credentials, longed

to be guards since
they were children.

Airports are as harsh
as Purgatory, immigrants

in charge of sweeping
the scorched feathers

and saints remaining silent
confusing complicity with holiness.

After my passport is stamped
I walk on home soil, still

a foreigner after decades of abiding,
hiding my accent under my coat.

(previously published in SoFloPoJo, 2025)