Your streets are paved with
waste and
forgotten newspapers
not gold.

Remember when so many
mothers dreamed of polished
skirts for their daughters, new cars
for their sons.

America.
Are you listening?

Remember each mother’s weighty black
sadness when the child asked for
baloney, not spanish rice,
peanut butter, not kimchee.

Are you listening?
Are you

because I know sometimes you forget
us, we who are not so important.
Not pure, glistening, somehow
free from unsaid question marks.

Can you hear my father’s cramped voice
he uses for the telephone, for the
blank-walled stores?

He is losing faith,
but still pretends to believe
in you.

Like some lost lover, not talked about, or
fairy tale, already graying around pink edges, or
dead child, buried yet hopelessly cherished.