A Day Without an Immigrant, Dallas, Texas
By Shin Yu Pai
At Pearl Street station,
two brown-skinned men
in painter’s pants stand
out in a sea of white
I am just one more face
sticking out in a crowd
& it is my privilege
that prevents me from
understanding why
the workers want to know
how to buy one-way trips
the automated machine
sells only one roundtrip fee,
back to where you came from
he isn’t asking me for change
says it clear enough so that
there can be no mistake
Sí. Yo sé.
But a dollar fifty is a lot of money.
Copyright Credit: Shin Yu Pai, "A Day Without an Immigrant, Dallas, Texas" from Adamantine. Copyright © 2010 by Shin Yu Pai. Reprinted by permission of White Pine Press, www.whitepine.org.
Source: Adamantine (White Pine Press, 2010)