My Little Immigrant Parents

could not wait to blotch their boots

in muddy America;

to sing in shower stalls

that were stained red

& sometimes creaked

they loved the taste of waxy

American cheese from the local grocer’s 

English slipped through the corners 

of their lips

& right onto a plate of soup

of flavorless language

gushing out of their mouths like a swollen tooth

Mama’s breath reeked of starvation;

the afternoon scraps stuck to the whites of her tongue

& Papa’s broken teeth fell 

with the biting evening

He would wake up in the groggy mornings

and return to foggy evenings

with cigarette ashes trailing off his boots

like the ghost of his childhood waddling away

Papa ended up breaking his lungs

at the demolition-site

while Mama's hair greyed with age

then I was born

when she was thirty-eight