Family Stories

~after Emma Lazarus

You keep telling these old family stories—give
me a break. They can’t all be saints. Don’t tell me
everyone had perfect immigration papers in your
family tree. This noble narrative— it’s tired.
Are you really sure that your
relatives were so perfect? They were poor,
yes, and scrappy. Maybe they had no papers, your
ancestors! Now you all watch the news, huddled
together, saying that outsiders are coming in masses.
You talk about the old days with a yearning.
But who knows if your people— our family— came to
this country “the right way?” They just want to breathe,
these newcomers. Like us, they just want to be free.

“The golden shovel is a poetic form wherein each word of one line from another poem serves as the end word of each line for a newly constructed poem” (Poets.org, from the American Academy of Poets).

Mary E. Cronin is a poet, author, and Literacy Coach who lives on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. Her picture book biography of PFLAG founder Jeanne Manford, LIKE A MOTHER BEAR, is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster/Atheneum. Her poetry has been featured in The New York Times, Radical Teacher, Rise Up Review, and in Rhyme and Rhythm: Poems for Student Athletes. She is represented by Lori Steel of SteelWorks Literary. You can reach her at www.maryecronin.com.