Every Day We Get More Illegal is a collection of poems by former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera that is spiritual and lyrical and politically incisive. It portrays alienation, otherness, and invisibility that parallels conversations groups like Black Lives Matter are trying to make happen. I loved “i am not a paid protester,” a surreal call and response encounter between an immigrant and the xenophobic racist institution spinning conspiracy theories: we are on the way/ I am hitting the button/ get out of your bubble/ I am hitting the button/ what button/ the deportation button/ wow/ you hear me/ wow/ I am hitting it/ it’s not the deportation button – push it/ you are tricking me/ it’s the mass hypnosis button. While the book’s title poem is great (and you can find recordings of Herrera reading it on the Internet) my favorite lines were from another poem, “Enuf,”which ends “used to think I was not American enuf/now it is the other way around.” Here’s what Publishers Weekly says:
