Identity's Coat

Today you explain immigrant labels assigned that do not come in your size

The masks that you don manufactured by hardened minds who cannot realize

That their reality coat belched from a factory of fear scratches at your throat

You no longer seek to wear it so those more privileged can gloat

Over finer coats of exceptionalism stitched with flimsy fabric of faded work

You can ascend beyond falseness' safe limits and never shirk

Your commitment to precious dreams of possibility

Which provokes our establishment to irrational hostility

This links you to our woebegone forbearers coming here without a lot

Whether the land of the free should choose now to admit it or not

Yours is the allegiance which matters

While today's battles for survival leave all surety in tatters

For it is you and those like you

Who remind us of which American identity remains true.

“we shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will. And we shall continue to love you.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.