GENNY LIM

The Immigrant

In honor of the lives lost crossing the Mexican Border and Canal



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 traps her wings


I heard her lyric braided into the 


barbed wire around the hollow stems 


along the canal at dawn where I saw


the shimmering flowers


clothed in jeans and tee-shirts


shaming the constellation


“Take me to myself!” they cried


“I have no mother to birth me here!


Take me to where the sun rises in my manhood!


To where the moon fashions my lover’s eyes!


Take off my soaked collar, my shoes


Take my backpack and banished suitcase


I left for tomorrow!


What need have I for sorrow on this journey?


What need have I for dreams or love songs?


Light passes between each echo 


but this river of stones will not deny the


border between my hand and yours


between life and death


“Love is the only branch to which I cling 


What need have I for breath?”



Copyright 2012 by Genny Lim

Genny Lim’s award-winning play Paper Angels, was the first Asian American play featured on PBS’s American Playhouse in 1985, and was performed in China, Canada and throughout the U.S. She is the author of three poetry collections, Child of War and Winter Place, Paper Gods and Rebels and co-author of the American Book Award winning, Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, re-published in a new and expanded edition in 2014. She has performed in World international poetry festivals and collaborated with jazz legends Max Roach, Herbie Lewis, Fred Ho and Bay Area’s John Santos, Jon Jang and Anthony Brown.