Our Countries
I marched the colors of America’s capital in my hands
during vulnerable years in life
I thought the world could be mine if I served.
The cherry blossoms were particularly sick and bright in 2001.
Much later, I sat alone in a bar with a martini
in Takoma Park, the neighborhood I had learned to call home.
My hand was sweaty around my phone
when my cousin in Japan texted me hello.
What a handsome nikkei man, I thought.
The distance between us
is larger than the length of our exiles
He tells me: I miss you, how can I would love to see America
I can help your eyes:
Two Bronze Cranes
Dual wings, blunt bills
Unravel barbed wire
They extricate a sin
Our old country conspired to exterminate your kin
There is no other way to say this
How can we temper memory in our new countries?
Hidden within The National Mall:
Piss and stone at the feet of cranes next to this claim
“Here we admit a wrong”
certainly not corrected.
It is not the arrangement of the stone that moves me, nor
Reagan’s words.
It is the height of feathers
and their invisible blood
they drip from each desert city as etched words.
Apologies, the constant——
Cleanse the steel——
Desert sins repeated——
American need to cleanse——
galvanize the billets——
Desert sins repeated——
Upturned hands——
sulfate and zinc——
Desert sins repeated——
The concentric embrace——
barbed wire——
Desert sins repeated——
Rattlesnakes copulate——
American——
Desert sins repeated——
I was a boy chasing a raven through a vineyard when I first laced my hands with barbed wire.
I can help your eyes:
countless people suffer
American Desert sins repeated
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