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Crossing Oceans
- University of Pittsburgh Press
- Chapter
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71 Crossing Oceans an immigrant sits down to tell you a life story—a father who fled the old country with nothing but hope and a few potatoes a mother with the family fortune sewn into her garments you look behind your shield of skin—collect the endless tales to tell of who made it first to these shores and how the shackles cut deep to bone and where the hounds smelled flesh rancid fresh with wounds the immigrant smells no branding iron no meat seared to the skin from a limb still bleeding—no naked retreat on moonless nights the long journey that no one takes willingly through this country’s past human cargo rotting in the dark then the sudden burst of morning light 72 that holds no promise other than obedience the immigrant speaks in hushed tones of steamer trunks the Old World life bundled in charm and quickly turns history’s page until it falls open to the story that suits memory we have so little to say in the end about what was left behind and how exactly we arrived in a place we dare call home— ancestors stripped bare in some nameless port of call no boot straps to pull them free the immigrant holds America’s frayed coloring book the old country replaced with a handful of crayons in indelible pastels figures outlined in thick black ink—flesh tones missing the promise of a new life on clean white sheets of rag-bound paper ...