Collateral Damage
i.
then, as in the past, there were photographs of boys who died in Viet Nam / a girl
torched with napalm
nothing happy after that, nothing childhood
ii.
i quit the laundry / quit the boys who called me scoshi / quit gook or slit / quit geisha
madame butterfly must die : executive order
iii.
paradox of dna that triggered my aversion to the sonnet and
my doppelganger ganging up with the Caucasian
iv.
i quit the abacus/ failed math / floated in the amniotic algebra
of signs and symbols like a dagger
up my sleeve
iv.
then, as in the future sense, i am standing at the window / across the street / izanami/izanagi on a
bridge / then helicopters …
Bamboo
in the middle of the city, in the middle of the street, a shelter for no reason. a thicket of
bamboo, between a torii-gate that’s weathered-gray and a house with yellow siding
a bamboo stand that chatters in the wind
stalk-talking, whispering
about the way the winter wasn’t much
about Shen Kuo,
who in the 11th century found
evidence of climate change in petrified
bamboo, Be strong, i hear Okaasan say, when they pulled their eyelids up, Stop crying, be
like
bamboo in its timber-strength, that makes a stand. sends out runners, shoots,
soars into the culms that harden thick and deep into green bundles.
bamboo that thrives on the margins. i was small, it’s true
but of a certain species that sparks when struck by an axe. Ha! Take that,
you lidless boys, i am cyanide in sacred pulp, regardless of geographies
or mothers, i am harvested when sugar in the sap is highest,
under the conditions that are harshest … it’s true:
things get lost sometimes in forests of
bamboo that flower unpredictably: hubcaps, plastic bottles. birds. i can hear them
thrashing when I pass the stand between the torii and the yellow house.
A stock that will die, once the flowering is done, together.
Featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, Kathleen Hellen’s work has been nominated multiple times for Best of the Net and the Pushcart. She is the recipient of the James Still Award, the Thomas Merton prize for Poetry of the Sacred, and poetry prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review. Hellen is the author of three full-length poetry collections, including Meet Me at the Bottom, The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin, and Umberto’s Night, which won the poetry prize from Washington Writers’ Publishing House, and two chapbooks.
