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how much of who we could have been
melted in the pot we were thrown into,
in those early days- new to the diaspora,
singing yankee doodle dandy, all of us
repercussions of american imperial yearning:
wide-eyed boys and girls from:
lao, vietnam, nicaragua, el salvador, haiti, iran
disappearing in the monocultural metaphor
for the heterogeneous society we witnessed
on the great eraser of selves-
leaving it to beaver and dreaming of genie,
ensuring otherness and denigration.
the only way to survive
disappearing into the white.

everywhere we went
we were together
marginalised and othered.
picnicking with our strange foods,
living blindly, unaware of the rules.

sometimes even the disappeared
can hear the echos of their ancestors’
voices, whispering in strange accents.
what they’re saying too foreign to be understood.
we are americans now with our tongues
coerced to recite the pledge of allegiance
and the merits of capitalism and melting pots.