I Just Got Back

by Georgia Park

I just got back to the US
And someone said,
“Are you sure you want to go back there?
It’s getting kind of dangerous.”
This was an American.

I once crossed a border
on my hands and knees in the dirt
to get back to America
Where you can drink the water
And there’s hospitals
And people speak my language,
Easily, free flowing
Even when my words tumble and fail me-
When I’m dehydrating rapidly

Where no one mistakes me for a Russian
With all the implications
Of being a Russian immigrant woman
Alone at night or in the morning

Where at least I could call the police
Although I wouldn’t recommend it
For my baby brother,
I’ve trained him in the art
Of not getting shot
For his skin color

Korea had signs up in Seoul
Saying, “No Africans allowed here.”
Because of Ebola,
The Thai would not allow their own people in
To the more expensive places,
I was run down with a car in Costa Rica
by people sneering gringa,
I was chased in Panama
and almost kidnapped,
In Nicaragua, the white man pedophilia
was rampant
so they thought I was with a sex tourist,
I dropped out of my own high school
Because they spit at me and called me gay-

I carry mace in the United States
When people come near me,
I back away.

I’m not safe here
The way I had been in Asia
But I was well aware of that
Coming back
To where

My aging father is weeping suddenly
and telling all of his children to run, run to Canada
but I just got back here
to be with him
and I’m not leaving
ever again.

Georgia Park used to be a semi well behaved woman before she got a BA in creative writing, became a pseudonym and started wreaking all sorts of havoc. She is a contributing member of Sudden Denouement Literary Collective, among other things. She does funny, playful, dark, morbid, Trump related and non Trump related poems, with or without an emphasis on travel. So far, her poetry has been accepted by Halfway Down the Stairs literary magazine, Wraith Infirmity Muses literary magazine, Holy Crow Art and The Scarlet Tongue Project.

Photo by: Ana Prundaru