Chinese Exclusion Act
(A Lost-and-Found Poem)
By Gerald Sloan
Of the eight Chinese passengers
aboard the Titanic, six survived,
but they were deported within
24 hours of arriving in the USA,
giving the lie, even then, to our grand
proposition at the feet of Liberty,
like the interest on a bad loan
postponing the principal.
My wife and daughter are CBA
(i.e. Chinese-born Americans).
They don’t know how easy they
have it today, unaware
that the prevalence of hate
would annul our marriage prior to 1948.
Gerry Sloan is a retired music professor living in Fayetteville, Arkansas. His poetry collections are Paper Lanterns (2011) and Crossings: A Memoir in Verse (2017) plus several chapbooks including Wild Muse: Ozarks Nature Poetry (2022).
Spread the word