“Ellis Island” is a 27-line free verse poem. A free verse poem does not adhere to rhyme, and it does not have a regular meter. The poem’s first stanza consists of thirteen lines of varying lengths. These first thirteen lines establish the poem’s premise—the European immigration through Ellis Island that dominates traditional ancestry and heritage stories. Much like how European immigration stories dominate America’s historical narratives, the first stanza establishes the poem’s premise and foundation.

The second stanza is brief, only four lines long. It deviates from the first stanza’s detailed imagery. In the second stanza, the point of view shifts from a relatively objective, observational one to a personal, subjective view. The speaker states, “Like millions of others, / I too come to this island” (Lines 14-15). This is the only line of the poem in which the speaker uses the first-person pronoun “I” (Line 14). A separation occurs in this stanza as the speaker segues into an acknowledgement of their place in this ancestry: “nine decades the answerer / of dreams” (Lines 16-17).