"What is an Immigrant?" by Martha B.

               What is an immigrant?

What does an Illegal immigrant look like?

I saw one that looked like the desert, a little rough around the edges and humbly dry.

An illegal immigrant looks like a coin, a penny maybe, tails up on the asphalt, dropped from the group of quarters.

She looks like dirty rough towels and bleached sheets tucked tight into never ending beds, fifteen stories tall.

they look like a purple grape, bruises confused for stains, picked by the millions for only a few coins of that million, Could you spare a little more?

surely you can

he looks like that boy over there, I never bothered to learn his name but his lunch is green wrapped in a soggy paper towel and it  reeks    

What does an illegal immigrant taste like?

she tastes like chili powder, tingly on your tongue, on lips like America

he tastes like tears, salty and sweet on a set of cheeks that are too thin for the pair of bones protruding from his face

What does an illegal immigrant feel like?

He feels like rain pelting on the back of a worn out plaid shirt, dry and re-dry unknowing if it’ll survive another rain storm. Maybe this time the water will leak through the material and into his heart

but it never does, it never does.

An immigrant looks like the Chinese Exclusion act, he looks like a man sitting on a bench in Arizona wanting to hide himself, did he bring along his papers? but how can he hide himself?   

she looks like food, fried and baked, behind a counter and she’s sorry, she is, and she’d like to get to know you.

an illegal immigrant looks like a ship, in 1492 sailing for the ocean blue

So what exactly does an immigrant look like?

they look familiar

Kind of like me, like my mom and my dad

and if you look closely enough they look a little like you.