Are migrants proud Australians?
Our nation based on immigration,
One polyglot meld of humanity,
To Australia show fidelity,
Our nation of peaceful tolerance,
People from Earth's shifting sands,
Living here in our Great Southern Land,
Deployment should not be our dance,
Nothing wrong with loyalty,
Patriotism our children's legacy,
---Great Southern Land,
All welcome to be Australians!

A flag of a distant island
On the wall of a "home"
Made on a compound
An immigrant family
A mother trying hard
To grasp the sands
Slipping through
the hands of time
As the children prides
Themselves
On the fading memory
Of a language spoken
In a far away land...

Poema Code Switching
By Aylin Soto-Aleman, Mercedes Caballero, Jesus Martinez, Marta Silva, Alex Alejandre
16.4.15

El final de una etapa
The end,
The beginning of a new journey
un camino
A un mundo extranjero
Un deseo, un sueño
A dream
Haciendo mi propio path
un camino
rostros nuevos , new failures
historias nuevas , new experiences
a sequel to my story, con hojas rotas
y mojadas    


INMIGRACION

La memoria es un salto
entre continentes
crossing invisible borders
swimming in the rios
corriendo debajo del sol

La memoria es los abuelitos
ancestors cooking arroz y frijoles,
flan, driving through for hamburgers,
popcorn, sipping on horchata
Basilica
No todo lo que brilla es oro
not all rainbows and butterflies,
Clarita y sus cien años
Ruben y sus Tacos del Camino Real
El rancho
Midnight movies
Quiero a quien me quiera
It’s been a long day, without you my friend
Mexicanos al grito de guerra
Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light
Tepechitlan, Jerecuaro, Guanajuato
Long Beach, Argentine, KCK,
Chihuahua,
A Distance Between Us
El puente, the bridge.
Three Little Pigs en casa, at home,
don't step out marranitos,
la llorona te va a llevar

Memory is a leap
between continents
Cruzando fronteras invisibles,
Nadando en los rivers
Running under the sun

Born in different places
Pero las mismas intenciones

Nobody heard them, the 900,
But still they lay screaming.
We were much further out than they were,
And not waving but drowning.

Poor migrants, lured to a better life –
Now they’re dead.
It must have been too hot for them
In Gambia, Senegal, Syria, they said,

Oh no no no, it was too hot always,
Still, the stranded ones lay screaming.
We were much further out than they were,
And not waving but drowning.

1.
Such vehemence
For immigrants
Border patrol
Vigilance
I never knew
A human being
Could be illegal

2.
A child should never be taught to hate
And human beings must never be insulated
Or inoculated against the horrors of war


3.
There is no liberation in this economy
Debt is a slower and slightly grayer
Variation of slavery
No more cotton fields but prison labor
Tell me where is our great modern emancipator?

Not knowing where I belong; 
Here, at home or beyond?
Spreading thin, cut in quarters,
What became of the unity we fought for?

Afraid of the landscapes built upon
We paint over lived canvases,
Struggling to focus for too long,
Looking for the creative thread among the masses.

Saying we will settle in years to come,
Waiting for a moment telling us its time,
"Don't you know that settling isn't for some",
They shout as they search for a place to call "mine".

Firstly perched close to the shore,
Seagulls as a waking call,
Horizons as signs of furthermores,
Avoiding any reminder of the restricting city wall.

Secondly a little closer,
To those who we hold in our hearts,
Greeting mornings with a train tracks murmur,
What an adventurous start.

Then wishes slowly lost their power,
Landscape stretch to resemble concrete cubicals,
Lighting up in the midnight hours
Yet another sign of the lost will.

Third is when we return to where it all started,
A full circle without filling the core,
Was this what all the searching led too?
Is home where I began reaching for?

It doesn't need an ending, 
just a beginning and middle,
Endings are the one sure thing,
In life's great sodden riddle.