Immigration poems explore the experience of moving to another country and the changes that may follow. Language, work, family, memory, unfamiliar routines, and a changing sense of belonging can become material for hope, uncertainty, loss, and discovery.
Read the examples below as individual perspectives on migration. Notice what the speaker carries, leaves behind, or learns to recognize in a new place. A concrete encounter can reveal the distance between official descriptions of immigration and the personal experience of building a life.
Eurasian spoonbills
Mongolia to China
they have headed south
neat stopover in wetland
rest and eat abundant fish.
It sits there, motionless, buried under unread mail in the drawer,
The once-sharp scissors my dad brought from his childhood home in Nepal,
Its blades now rusty, dull, and sore,
It sits there, motionless, waiting for a final call.
It waits through slammed doors, late-night apologies, and birthdays,
Eager for a chance to get picked up and put to work,
Just like it did in my dad's college days,
It waits patiently, preventing itself from bursting like a firework.
It holds its breath in the dark,
Yearning for a warm and loving hand,
Like the one that packed it and crossed the world to leave its mark,
It holds its breath, hopeful for a future in this new land.
For now, the drawer remains shut,
Where our family's Nepali history leaves its silver trace,
There lie resilient blades that time failed to cut,
Resting quietly in this loud, chaotic place.
Milkweed butterfly,
iconic pollinator.
Golden, bold, and black.
Eastern migrant,
Canada to Mexico,
A thousand miles back.
Western wanderer,
winters in California.
Recalls its way north.
Milkweed butterfly,
iconic pollinator.
Golden, bold, and black.
Strike! Strike!
Strike up the Band!
If you're brown
please beware
If you’re black
watch your back
If you’re yellow
dive for cover
If you’re red
you’re already dead
Strike! Strike!
Strike up the Band!
They’re coming to take us away!
They’re coming to take us away!
Raise high the flag
Raise high those stars and stripes
We’re Christians and Hindus
Muslims and Jews
We work, we sing, we dance
We play in parks
On Sundays after church
We’re neighbors
We’re lovers
We’re builders, cowboys
waiters, and cooks
We’re hot dog vendors
and ice cream peddlers
We hoe your fields
and pick your fruit.
We drive your trucks
and plow your fields
We cut your meat
and herd your cows
You wonder the price
You wonder the vice
It’s time to De-Ice
Rid us of these lice?
Strike! Strike!
Strike up the Band!
They came and took us away
away
away
away to Guantanamo
American cheese, if you please
Not Taiwanese or Japanese
Nothing Maltese or Vietnamese
American cheese, if you please
You say I must try Swiss Cheese
Lebanese and Nepalese
At Chanukah, ‘Monterey of Maccabees’
Farvoss?* American cheese, if you please *'What for?' (Yiddish)
But surely you’ll take a bite of Siamese
Portuguese, Pekinese or Paraguese
And how can you neglect Senegalese and Congolese
Not now. If you please, American cheese
Is our diner a narrow-minded provincial
Nisht!** ~ she’s old, a Jewish immigrant NYC election official **No! Not! (Yiddish)
Unfortunately, the Haitian people have everything to lose
They are very fragile, humiliated, vilified, and abused
My people have been suffering for years, for centuries
On the pavement, in the streets, in the harbor and on the high seas.
Our people, our brothers and sisters!
Their wicked leaders once in power, the liars
Change all plans to the detriment of the poor
Who are quickly forgotten in the filthy cans
Their spleen, sweat and blood flow are floating in the sewers
They are despised by hens,
By guinea fowls, by roosters, and all types of demons
It was yesterday that they were applauding like dummies,
Cheering, hoping to be awarded with crumbs and pennies.
These zealous brothers are on fire, they are now deaf and crazy
at the end. Even patience has borders and boundaries
Where greedy, covetous and corrupt officials behave like evil yeasts.
Copyright © January 23, 2016 Logerie Hébert, All Rights Reserved
Hebert Logerie is the author of several collections of poetry.
These people
always like
to say that
“the gloves
do not bite”
but sadly now
they are being
used to shock;
But I do know
what it means
to burn red hot
for I once felt
very hot water
on my torso
and was quite
cruelly mocked;
“Never forgive,
and never forget”
is precisely what
they always seem
to want to say,
but false leaders
always lie to the
misguided flocks;
They take from us
and manipulate war
to fool the ignorant
and betray the wise,
and that is exactly
why they scheme
whenever they are
off the work clock.
Only a monster tainted by evil supports the use of electric shock to control other humans. You cannot change my mind.
I heard a poem on immigration. It was a desperate plea for stopping the insanity that has taken place over our world and country. That a leader of our country would allow harm to come to our immigrants. Who once came to the Americas to gain promise. To build up a country that needed support. A country where one could thrive and grow from tyranny. That someone would send backward to life's death. How could we as Americans, all immigrants, allow this? I am writing thoughts to express; how deeply disappointed, I have become. in my eighty-two years I never thought this could happen here, and yet it has.
Can't we all come together to pray to stop the insanity? Can we not look for a brighter future as immigranits. Building up, sharing and caring for one another. Can we not talk among ourselves to make the great change to what this country once was? Is the dream over?
A child…in a foreign land.
Where we come from—it's all just sand.
Deserted the desert...
but still feeling tethered
to the place that feels
forever home.
Yet—that place
we can no longer roam.
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Left the home land with legislative laws.
As they contained loads of legality flaws.
The colour of my skin cutting at me like a saw.
No jobs, no work, it was my last straw.
Left the land I knew to go and find more.
Knowing that the Foreign Land would have something better in store.
When I moved—I thought my troubles would be soothed.
But found other trouble,
my persistent presence made the locals grumble.
Looked at as an immigrant,
but every day—
a defendant.
"They are stealing our jobs!"you say.
"They are stealing our wives!"you convey.
You never stopped to think—
That just maybe...
we're trying our best?
Yet...
we will always
be seen as less?
At home,
we've got families to feed,
we've got people who are in need.
But what you fail to understand—
We can't help them...
unless we are in the Foreign Land.
Zipper on my lips
A contagion in my veins
paralyzed spirit
Why this fascination with wings?
Said Wilbur – Am I wrong or am
I Write, replied Orville? Continuing to
refine his draw: Some like to jog,
while I think to soar. Wilbur, less
convinced, on the cot began to
snore. Then some geese came honking
by – Wilbur, rubbing clear a sleepy eye~
at length agreeing, Write behind you, brother!
Settled with a coin-toss, Orville’s Mail-order coin.
Wilbur was first to try.
Everyone pooh-poohs me
Are they simply too blind to see
the takeover of America by the likes of Mamdani
Bernie Sanders, Omer, Tlaib, and AOC
who’ll raise our taxes sky-high and ration our heat
defund police, empty prisons onto streets
Three cheers for ‘union’ – of teachers, that is
grant them more pay hikes for brainwashing kids
And what of the immigrants who came here for freedom
~ nowhere to be found now except in museums
Standing proud on the Hudson River
Built for the world to see
Essence golden
Encouraging immigrants to visit America and stay
Beacon of Hope
Setting the standards of desire
Transformation into survival reality
Lady Liberty entry
Embarking full force on Freedom
Wisdom understanding
Journeying ships far and wide
Everlasting commitment
Tomorrow and arriving today permanent
Around the globe a set sail
Dreams mounted without fail
Multitudes of heritage
Languages spoken from every native tongue
New York City renaissance of transcend
Lady Liberty assurance
Constitution policy like insurance
Total guarantee
Lady Liberty concept with an agenda being a promise.
Let the earth blaze and give heaven all the praise
I saw him from afar as he swung in front of the bar
He looks strong and mean, as he fought with strength
And vigor to hold on to his dreams
As he stepped out on center stage the crowd starts to blaze
The samurai spirit moves up and down the field
With vigor and might embracing the young’s man’s zeal
It absorb ever single hour and fill the young man with power
Even the wind was still when the samurai spirit walks in
It took control of the field and one by one the truth was revealed
The samurai spirit is in town and it sweeps everything off the ground.
A young man stabbed, runs for police,
but his attacker was a Sikh,
who claimed ‘racism,’ and these cops
cuffed the poor victim as he dropped,
much more concerned with brownish skin
than murder, the quite worst of sins,
more fearful of the word ‘racist’
than life which no longer exists,
and then try to hide their disgrace,
let killers walk just to save face,
stopped only by a loud outcry,
not the fact they let a man die,
as leftist filth fear ‘the backlash,’
when the die is already cast.
The same scum who excused rape gangs,
their own daughters in vile hands,
ravaged by cruel Mohammedans…
rapists should swing from the tree limbs.
Another attack in Belfast,
we all know it won’t be the last,
the leftists despise their own kind,
think foreigners can’t be malign,
think they can bring in failed cultures,
and from them somehow be inured,
wrapped in their lazy, Marxist faith,
that only teaches to self-hate,
arrest folks for having wrong thoughts,
a tyranny wrapped up in rot,
all loyalty to you they spurned…
perhaps it’s right to make it burn.
Immigration Categories
Definition | What is Immigration in Poetry?
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.
Related Poetry Forms
travel, exodus, migration, displacement, exile, voyage, relocation, removal, movement, transmigration, defection, march, peregrination, colonization, journey, expatriation, trek, shift, departure, crossing, wandering, moving, resettlement, settling, transplanting, leaving, homesteading, reestablishment, uprooting,