Katie Kemple
The Cold Colossus
Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge.
—Ken Cuccinelli, acting head of Citizenship and Immigration Services, in response to an interview question posed by NPR anchor Rachel Martin as to whether Emma Lazarus’s words etched on the Statue of Liberty fairly represent the American perspective on immigration and immigrants (August 13, 2019)
Where once we welcomed huddled
masses, today we separate mothers
from daughters, fathers from sons, place
children in cages to care for themselves.
People who’ve walked like slaves,
through the desert quite literally,
in search of justice, safety, liberty—
lose their most precious commodity.
Orphaned babies cry behind bars
without clean diapers, toiletries or love.
To be a parent and mournfully concede:
They’re as safe here as they’ll ever be.
Lady Liberty’s torch left unfed
replaced by a fist of ICE instead.
Katie Kemple is the founder and principal at Panarelli Consulting, LLC, specializing in marketing and public relations strategies for media and entertainment companies. She has been a consultant on projects with NPR, CPB, KERA, Maximum Fun, Car Talk VDS, Intelligence Squared U.S., The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and Capitol News Connection. She has also worked for The Washington Post, WGBH, WETA and Washington Performing Arts Society. Several of her poems were included in the anthology Oh One Arrow (flim forum press, 2007), edited by
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