Exposed
At home mama say „girl, watch you’ mouth.
Don’t like how you speak.”
In the school yard the children say, “Is cat, not Kyat.”
I try to bury my accent
but slips out “kyat” that is it.
At school they line children up.
Aliens must stand aside to show themselves.
My red face speaks of my otherness
before I am identified.
“So many of them,” the sudden hush speaks.
Fingers needn’t point.
“Alien” invisibly stamped on immigrants’ foreheads,
we cannot forget and they won’t let us.
© Althea Romeo-Mark 07.01.2012
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