Karen An-hwei Lee (“Letter from Orange Country,” Issue 4) has a new chapbook, What the Sea Earns for a Living forthcoming from Quaci Press in December 2014. She has also produced a new poetry-video, which makes its debut here.
FIRE ON ANGEL ISLAND
for the Chinese immigrants detained on Angel Island
Waiting for a word on our incarceration,
we carve the cells, first brushing our grief,
then bleeding our injury with knives.
When white officials plaster over the words,
we carve the flesh of our walls again, then leave
their weathering to time exposed to the bone.
Mailing a letter is out of the question
with surveillance. Besides, who knows
whether it will arrive?
Barred access to freedom, we send hope
to our overseas families in the spirit
of ash to ash.
One who interprets dreams says, my soul
is no longer incarcerated here. It flies back
to my loved ones who welcome me at the river.
Another says, one day, this prison will catch fire.
Everything will burn. Our misery
will depart in exile from Gold Mountain,
yet it returns to share with you, reader:
In fact, Angel Island did burn in our lifetime.
The women’s barracks, destroyed by fire.
In light of gold’s irony, I write this
as an offering to their flames, in memory:
This island is a domain of real angels
and sagebrush, not xenophobia.
It burns with a vengeance
mixed with the toxic ash of exclusion.