Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
Terry SavoieFebruary 05, 2001
Out of busses; water-
buffalo carts; military
transports, out of harm's
way they spill,these dark,
brooding Kierkegaards,
shoulders slumped,
clutching their god-
defiant hopes, dragging
behind them their neighbors'
far-flung curses. On common
ground they each stand upon
their two miserable excuses
for legs, planting them
timidly, praying for
a harvest. In haste
they've thrown together
their impoverished, cardboard
shacks & pasted-on smiles
for foreign news correspondents
as they squat down with crinkled,
devalued currency stuffed in-
side their dirty underwear;
the NO TRESPASSING
signs hanging like millstones
from their necks. They've traveled
with generations of precious heirlooms,
without the solace of first-born sons.
Behold, here are the world's first
citizens: wizened fathers with
Zenith TV's strapped to their backs;
mothers with tired, spent breasts;
children lost forever inside
a foreign-language loudspeaker
announcement that screams bloody
murder at them, Go home to wherever
it is you came from, you bastards!
Yes, they're going, they're going,
but they never seem to be
quite able to get there.
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.

The latest from america

A woman reads a book while sitting on the bank of a calm river, with mountains in the background. (iStock/swissmediavision)
After four decades in education, both secular and Catholic, I have witnessed teaching models come and go. The moment before us, however, is not a passing phase; it is a threshold.
Sarah GallagherJuly 24, 2025
The relics of Blesseds Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis, who are set to be canonized later this year, will be displayed in Rome for the Jubilee of Youth.
The Irish government “has done nothing to reduce the numbers of abortions…and seems not to care why women choose abortion, or what happens to them afterwards,” Bishop Kevin Doran of Elphin and Achonry said.
A Homily for the Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, by Father Terrance Klein
Terrance KleinJuly 23, 2025