America in the Day of Coronavirus

My fellow Americans

I am Sheltering in Place as of today

It's a simple revolution to resist the

Terrifying prospect of being a

Canary in the coal mine of your virus

You can scream or shout, wave your

Medical degrees, PhDs or citizenship

Papers in their face, but nobody will

Come to rescue you from the shape-

Shifting law of Xenophobia

Not Jesus, nor Krishna, nor Buddha

Nor Mohammed

Money is the Grand Wizard and greed

The trickster in a three-piece suit

Happy to make you his slave

No matter how much gold he has

He will double the size he needs

You may think it's a little too late

To avenge Indian killers who wiped

Out the Osage for a shiny rainbow

Of petroleum on a rippling creek

I'd as soon scalp the plastic head

Of the snake to avenge the Sioux

At Standing Rock for reasons too

Numerous to count from the Battle of

Little Big Horn and Wounded Knee

.

I am standing in the shadow of the moon

With no refuge as the earth slips

Further and further into the abyss

One hundred-and-fifty years and

Eight generations of Yellows migrating

The lonely highway of opportunity on

This godforsaken mountain to carve

Their identity on the face of the white ghost

Thinking to trade poverty for hope

To wind up in debt and deportation for

Crossing the ocean in search of the

Elixir to unlock their dreams

They jumped ship, dug the Central Pacific

Dredged swampland and scoured toilets

But no amount of incense could ward off

The devil of despair

No amount of ritual could ease the memory

Of a Chinaman's bones tossed into a frigate

Shipped back home, like a sack of dried fish

.

I am counting the years we've racked up in

Silent servitude to your random acts of exclusion

I am counting the miles on my Mileage Plus to

Begin my journey back to the chrysalis of childhood

It's a simple revolution to release the grip on

My 135 year old ancestral neck and

Grandfather Yen Wah's three deportations

A vanished grandmother left behind and

My father's bartered childhood

.

We are what we've become and who can change that?

The past and the future are bequeathed to us in the

Flesh and blood of our young

Time is the train our fathers built and the

Train that left them behind

No one shipped the bones or ashes of  

The fifty or so Chinamen massacred at

Rock Springs back to China

Their ghosts are still mining the hills

You can see them on a cold winter night

With pick-axes frozen in their blistered hands

No one told them there was no such thing as death

They taught us to fear our shadows not knowing

That all journeys continue without beginning or end

They taught us to survive, knowing that each

Moment we experience is eternal

They showed us how to fly, knowing

That the center of gravity is within us

No matter where we fall

They taught us to wait and listen

Knowing when our hour has arrived

.

I am sheltering in place for the long haul

It's a simple revolution to resist the

Terror of defeat for our children

If the canary doesn't sing

Know it's you

Who's lost

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Poem from Window: Glimpses of Our Storied Past

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The Immigrant's Song

Who is the immigrant?

You or I?

Asleep between the wings

of day and night

This bird caught in flight

keeps singing her song

though no one sees her wings

I heard her lyric braided into the

barbed wire above the cove

across the sea at dawn where

tall buildings reached for the moon

as if daring the stars to stop them

'Take me to freedom!" I cried

"I have no mother to birth me here!

Take me to where the sun sets in the west!

To where the moon shines on golden streets!

Take off my soaked collar, my shoes

Take my memories and banished suitcase

I left for tomorrow!

What need have I for sorrow on this journey?

What need have I for regrets or despair?

Light passes between each echo

but this night of stones will not deny the

border between my land and yours

between life and death

Hope is the only branch to which I cling

What need have I for death?

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Poem featured as text in Lenora Lee Dance’s site specific performance of Within These Walls