Migration to the Land

A poet is someone who speaks his or her mind in minimal words. A political poet is someone who  speaks for a community's ideals in his or her words. Hello, my name is J.N., and I am going to GCE and taking a class called Poetic Justice. What Poetic Justice teaches to my class is the history of how poems shaped the political arena today. From such things as feminism, racial laws, LGBT laws, and much more, we dived into it. We had gone on multiple FEs such as the Third World Press, the Poetry Foundation, and many more.

What we had to do for the entire term was to create/re-write a poem that certain around a political issue we wanted to face. For myself, it was immigration, and how it is an injustice to take people who never even knew Mexico back there. I had to rewrite the poem over and over, but in the end, it was acceptable. What I am most proud in this poem is the symbolism, and what I am least proud of is how there isn't many political devices. Still, I hope you listen and enjoy my performance.

Artist Statement

My topic is about immigration and the experience of having to relocate to another country. I have chosen one of the biggest immigration stories of 2017. Rosa Maria Hernandez, a disabled Hispanic child crossed the border for health reasons. After she had surgery, she was detained by two border patrol agents. Not only does my poem talk about Maria, but the events of the Dream Act. It tries to demonstrate the importance of trying to look at deportation in a more humane manner. This is related to my own life is with friends and family I know. My mother has friends who are immigrants. She and I have seen the effect of deportation to a family and to the community.

The poetic devices are imagery, rhyming, consonance, assonance, and alliteration. All of these having a significant meaning, with rhyming and connese allowing both the reader and performer to memorize the text easier with rhythm. The assonance makes a stanza flow better, as well as alliteration doing the opposite in order to make the performer sound more in worry/troubled. I wished I could have used devices such as simile, so it could enhanced the imagery which was used to keep the listeners interested/ image the events in a more symbolic way. The reason I didn’t use simile was because it wasn’t necessary do to all the imagery. Though, if I had to choose my favorite devices in my poem, it would be alliteration since I felt like most of this poems tone should be worry rather than anger. If I had more time, I would try to add more alliteration, as well as simile, to advance the poem in both mood and setting.

For my performance, I tried to give out a mood of anger/ worry because of the injustice. The tone reflects that with my facial features getting angrier, as well as certain body movements, mostly shown through my hands. The cadence of my voice calm, to anger, to calm. To be honest, I felt like a lot of my poem relied on anger, and I wished I expressed more worry. I can improve on my performance by trying a whole range of different emotions in order to show of better the intensity of the poem.

Migrations to the Land

A family from a place of limited resources
Came to the US, a country that wishes for same tongues and certain faces
With conservatives minds thinking the alien mind was dumb and culturally misplaced

The family had no choice, for they had a daughter who needed body braces
She was born broken, and her family believed she could be fixed,
She journeyed to the country of immigrants when she was just 3 months old
The family knew if they were found, they would be banished

They could have been taken, thrown, and shipped if it weren’t for a liberal pact
A knight dubbed Dream came to defend and Act
He defended those with licences not strapped to their wetbacks
Even with his armor cracking, he still stands protecting
To those that the conservative mind would consider imperfection

As the years went by, his armor kept breaking and shaking
The backstabbing pen that once helped left him flaking
He still stood, but was unmercifully whipped with intolerance and ignorance
On September 5, 2017, he was beheaded.

And so, after ten grinding years, the daughter had grown not so grand and graceful as the family gradually hoped
Her condition had turn mental, and her blood could’ve turned cold
She went to a vehicle, with built in machines, red and white, but no blue lights
Till they got to a passing point, with two guardsmen entering as the door creaks

Without the knight, her life was likely to dry up,
The guardsmen looked across the room, trying to think a step ahead
They weren’t monsters, and let the girl pass despite orders
Yet they followed her, with each step building borders.

She was cured by ten medics with small swords
But when it was over, a loud door creak was heard, waiting for some reward
It was the two guardsmen that came, with the authority from the Trump card,
They took the girl, just like the millions of others, 150 miles away from their home

Some people heard her story “Why are they doing this to people, these laws they broke are too complex and blurry”
Some people couldn’t react, “This is outrage, unacceptable, these government solutions have never been more worrying
Others tried to share the story “ And they took her out of bed, right in the middle of the day, and stole her in a dashing hurry”
Headlines screamed; Border Agents Detain 10-year-old After Emergency Surgery

This action our government has taken is simply criminal
Liberals saw it as desecrating, as despicable
But conservatives argued: it’s for the greater good!
They preached if these aliens stayed, the reality will be heroine, meth, and cocaine
They believe people will go insane, as liquid and powder are shot in their brains

The girl now waits weary and is wedged as the wary scale weighing on such truths
For the creeking to come, so they could ship her to a place she never kne
They try keep her hidden from eyes far inside the bureaucratic wall
The daughter is now seen by representatives she never knew at all