*Since 1953, Korea has sent over one hundred fifty thousand children to the USA via inter-country adoption. Due to a loophole in the Child Citizenship Act, there are an estimated thirty-five thousand inter-country adoptees living without US citizenship. Some have been deported to their country of origin.
Korea exported me to America
before I could speak my name
Minnesota, Land of ten thousand Lakes
Better Life, education
Forever family bruises
denied me US citizenship
homeless, absent high school degree
starvation shoplifts
military time served
America’s Promised Prison Land
Deported back to Korea
Incheon Airport lobby
solitary confinement persists
no Welcome sign
not even a
family reunions surround me
mother’s bouquet
embraces graduated daughter
No arms encircle my ghost body
Korean streets handcuff
my life sentence
birth land homesickness
leftover kimchi barely sustains
midnight Han River bridges
protect my frozen soul
brain resists foreign language
throat chokes syllables
language is life
Let me survive
my lifeless sentence