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Poem-a-day

Immigrant Song at a Food Truck

I touch your back with my dirty hands.
I open you.
I feel the growing heat
          between the sinews
            and the egg-white bun.
                       I eat the white of the bun.
                       I used to make cranes
                                   that you tossed away
                                               like promises
                                   in a severing winter.
                       I come to you in my dirty self, a poster
                                   full of deliberate errors
                                               made under duress
                                   by a young and willful staff.
                       Here I eat you. Here, a food truck
                                   sells sorrows in bun-sized bits, with you
                                               wrapped in newspaper articles
                                                           with jarring terms.
                                               I eat you whole, including
                                   the mayo on the photos, but soon
                       darkness drizzles, my image of you
            is a blur, my pen a bird in the air,
                       a uniformed officer smiles at me
            to scrape off even the salt in my hair
and dumps it back into the ocean.

Copyright © 2025 by Weija Pan. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 28, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.

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Weijia Pan

Weijia Pan
Courtesy of Weijia Pan
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About Poem-a-Day

Poem-a-Day is the original and only daily digital poetry series featuring over 250 new, previously unpublished poems by today’s talented poets each year. Randall Mann is the Guest Editor of August. Read or listen to a Q&A with Mann about his curatorial process, and learn more about the 2025 Guest Editors. Support Poem-a-Day.  

If you have any questions about Poem-a-Day, visit our Poem-a-Day FAQ.

Previous Poems

Title Author Date
DEAR GABRIELLE, Andrea Abi-Karam 02/27/2025
Symptoms that May Be Signs of Some Things Poupeh Missaghi 02/26/2025
Last Sky World Burn Fargo Nissim Tbakhi 02/25/2025
Spring Rachel Kyung-Joo Shin 02/24/2025
The Rivals Mark Van Doren 02/23/2025
Harlem: The Black City Fenton Johnson 02/22/2025
And So Many Are Dear Diana Marie Delgado 02/21/2025
Institutional(ized) Political Poem, or Poem for Disputed Territories Justin Rovillos Monson 02/20/2025
Solip Cystic Raquel Gutiérrez 02/19/2025
what can I know what should I do what may I hope Benjamin Krusling 02/18/2025

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