All the English words
An immigrant must know
For the sake of survival.
Later, I bulldozed
Those words to the ground
To make a new one: Home,
A word whose sound and shape
My parents don't recognize.
Now, I start to re-learn 家,
The word my parents
wrote on my palm
The day I left Formosa
For the land of maple leaves
Under the same bright moon.
Shot Glass Journal, #5, Fall 2011
Notes:
1 - 家 is the Chinese word for home.
2 - Formosa, which means "beautiful island" in Portuguese, is the former name of Taiwan.
