Perfectly positioned Southeast

As a greeting to oncoming vessels

I see your faces as clear as you see mine.

 

You are, huddled like swine,

Hoping that faith has aligned 

& brought you to the right place.

 

That time & space 

Haven’t forsaken you

By bringing you

Here,

Now.

 

I stand here

Day & night to usher you in,

I see the valleys in your brows

That reveal your journeys.

 

The protrusions of your ribs

That show your hunger,

And the the curling of your backs 

Because of the worlds you carry over.

Ready to throw into the warm melting pot.

 

But the cold truth is

We live in a salad bowl,

Where culture remain whole.

 

Where they’re pushed to the side 

To be diluted & secluded

 

Where new versions

Of the old world 

Spring up 

Becoming the only place

That you’ll feel safe

 

& even though they say the darker the berry

The sweeter the juice

Here,

The abuse from the center

Causes that bowl to splinter

Pushing your sweetness far away.

 

See those valleys,

Will only get deeper

And your ribs,

They will learn to love your skin.

 

Pushing against it so hard,

It seems like God

Is remaking woman.

 

& your back, oh your back will curl

Like a threatened arthropod

Until it spirals out of control

From all of the heavy lifting 

You’ll be forced to do;

 

Because Uncle Sam has invite you

to make a better life– for himself.

& he wants you– to do the dirty work.

& he’ll give you the American Dream,

which is really a nightmare,

where the only white pickets you’ll see

wont be on fences but in lines of Sam’s nativists 

telling you to go home.

 

& I know that Sam & I go hand in hand,

but our marriage is not as picturesque as it seems.

I was the mail order bride

Sent from france

As the wax seal to diplomatic ties,

Disguised as the Zeus and Hera of Earth,

The Athenians not knowing the strife he’d caused his wife,

and you not of what Sam has caused me.

 

See Sam’s foreign affairs brought you to me– unwanted children.

Like Heracles to Hera,

so i wont be villainized for your mistreatment,

because Cinderellas stepmother 

never asked for another daughter

but didn’t mind the free labor

& the little matchstick girls mother

was just an opportunist

 

& by me just doing this

I run the risk of pushing sams temper

he says I should tell you your rights

that its bad for business

but with god as my witness

I must make things right

 

because the broken chains that lay at my feet are reminders

not reminders to you of what weve stepped passed

but to me– that the chains are still there, not broken but open

ready to slap back on me to send me back to work

 

but sam has pimped my body to freedom for far too long

so i write you my children

hoping that you’ll get this message and come back from whence you came

spare you from my fate

 

Forget about the dreams & the lies& the jobs & the lies & the opportun & the lies

that have brought you here

 

Because this house is no home

& this story is no poem

The New Colossus is never coming

& here, the tired, poor huddled masses will never breathe free