Ken Siegelman

The issue of American identity is constantly under examination in our
multi-cultural society. Often, our National identity is revealed in subtle
subconscious ways...

TAIWANESE DOLLS

by Ken Siegelman, Brooklyn Poet Laureate

Their faces seem to bulge
In that ivory, lifeless way
Imagined by those who set the molds
When pouring plastic in the masks
Of American embryos -
Perhaps, as they have always thought of us,
and we of them;
Pursed lips and wide eyed with bewilderment
Like lashless infants
Who will never speak...
Their foster stay in our families
Finds them wedged inside the armpits
Of our toddlers
Or grasped and dragged by their synthetic hair,
Stretched on high stitched foreheads
and tortured into sleep...
At months’ end,
They seem worn into lazy lidded imbecility
with that half-closed drunken look
Of uncomfortability,
which lands them on the trash.
There the wind on New Year’s Day
Boweries them while waiting as recyclyables-
To mulch them into landfills
Where they become Americans at last.