Migrant Psalms

Migrant Psalms prays for a way to make sense of immigration to the United Statesnow that we realize the American Dream was always an impossible one. Both reverent and daring, this verse interrogates religion, race, class, family, and sexuality. Written as a call to action, the collection pulls together prayer, popular culture, and technology to tell a twenty-first-century migrant story. Migrant Psalms gives us a rare look inside a Panamanian experience of migration, describing the harsh realities of mothers, children, and teens who entered the United Statesor tried to do so. Holness poems find the universal through specificity; their exploration of expatriation, assimilation, and naturalization transcends the authors personal experience to speak to what it means to be other anywhere. The collection begins with Kyrie, a coming-to-America chronicle that spans three years in Texas, modeled after the liturgical Christian prayer Kyrie Eleison (Lord, have mercy). Other poems experiment with macaronic language and form to parallel shifts in the speakers status from immigrant to citizen, ending with The 21st Century Poem, which probes whats real in todays New York City. Through the speakers quest to become an American, this collection asks: Who are we becoming as individuals, as a society, as a nation, as a world? And is faith enough to enact change? Or is it just the first step?