Gateway

Everything of that culture, laid across a
fantasy gateway, imagined color amid

a sea of monochrome. Fog condenses
heavy in sorrow, saturating tracks laid

by missing fathers. Paper lanterns glow,
recalling dynamite that turned letters to

home into ash. Pacific mountain tombs,
photos of ribbon cuttings and half-truths,

poems carved into the Angel Island walls.
Everything of that culture — of the girls

whose bodies were bought and discarded,
of the paper sons who clambered out of

the smoking ruins of the city by the bay,
of the mourned. Of the perpetual foreigner

in quiescent resignation, of the quill that
etched into legislation the disfigurement

of heritage into hate, of the romanticized
gateway over which the blithe flag flies.

By Amy Liu