Poetry
GILA RIVER
for Yoshiko Kanazawa
The prisoners lived for many years—
had children grandchildren great-grandchildren
burned very quietly
to ash,
cut rectangles in the floor dug holes in the dirt
to stay cool
in July folded their bodies
like paper fell asleep
in the holes rivers evaporated. The prisoners disintegrated
Not even their secrets
Japanese Americans were not looking at themselves
turning white
not the cotton not the descendants of bloodless cotton
the children’s fathers refused to pick
Children were shy had stories to tell,
not their own, but those not resolved, still dirty
a nisei woman was asked if she would like to speak, share her story
the people facing the gleaming snow
looked sad, for a moment, then vulturous. sad again
expectant, ready to ascend.
The nisei woman shook her head, No, she said.
Are you sure, she was asked.
I don’t remember enough
to share She said
As she was looking through the snow She remembered everything
but could not, seven decades later, associate herself with the subjects
When the children arrived, there were turtles Snapping turtles
like helmets greeted the children
Turtles deep
deep deep
in the ditches, slowly rose and snapped at the children
like Yoshiko, wearing a dress of her mother’s crumpled face,
walked right up to the ditch
and peered in:
children were grabbed, pulled in, became turtles
How could she forget
the turtles were the solace of America
You don’t forget You are tricked,
into putting your hand in
mirror-green water. Your hand stays stuck
you stop looking
eyes were olives. Children were torches
One of each twin drowned
or burned down
to the dirt
where grandparents on their hands and knees
re-enacted the rose, the thorn
Long hair dangled
over water seasons stretched
camouflage nets
across the suburbs. shotgun shells spoons, heels of shoes,
talons, forked tongues, arrow-tipped tails,
the wake of a temple
men sitting beneath spiraling flowers
mother was very popular
with the ghosts
that grew out of the ditches they were soldiers
deep into the harmony of their hunger
Children sat on the hill
watched the desert changing colors the stars
lower
on tendons
movies smelled Carcasses came out
to narrate the silences
some sank into the cold, impenetrable shrapnel
fallen from tens of thousands of miles
only children remember to forget
with such warm innocence being struck
by the sun
not innocence Guilt
not the opposite of innocence But
like the dissolution of a flower into fruit,
compensation
and the will to be stolen
Noriyuki was eleven, had spinal TB
when he was incarcerated as an enemy of the United States His body was cut
from the cast and propped up
in front of the moving mirage Noriyuki,
better
or worse known as
Mr. Miyagi, for whom Noriyuki put on the accent
of an immigrant from Okinawa
His inscrutability was part of the trick the coming into consciousness
of a Japanese man
who had no one war extinguished
Truth, the country trained him
to be someone else, not other, but native
by pretending to be someone else, not native, but foreign
He stood in the bush
until the bush became ice
When Mr. Miyagi gets drunk and relives the war
are we not supposed to imagine Noriyuki, the actor,
summoning the memory
of the war he was living
as a child prisoner
is that misunderstanding
or a misunderstanding
Did you have anyone in the 442nd
No, I said, My ancestors are not corpses
propped upright in the corner
My ancestors do not stand in cold rooms in the dark draped with lights
round cancerous in which my face is warped waiting
to be turned on dance in the window
From afar incarceration looks like internment
It is always day
No Japanese Americans exist
at night The river is full Japanese Americans gather
in the sundown on the banks of the abundant river
to pay respects
to the primal thinking
of white men and women, distant, futuristic
summer or winter
or walking down the reservation
wild animals raised their heads land stretched away
The further away from the train
the less it moved
children watched their parents’ faces
framed in squares
and rectangles of light seam of stars,
then dark,
then darkness
Did it feel like travel? guarantee of returning?
Their movements were curtailed. sound was rhythmic suture.
Dreams of the wheels slipping off
wild animals moved fast. in the shadows of rocks:
I will see you
again. incriminated
by the sadness
of someone else’s dream
without ending migration becomes internal
for those who do not leave
keep the memory leaving
de-located,
migration was a test. the destination was the extent to which
a soul could be transformed. The United States wanted to replace
with a clock,
the furnace of assimilation. earth harbors
unintelligible tongues
in the core, tongues of flame, they are called,
the earth answers
with its cavernous body, I release you
into the custody of culture The toll is paid
by the enslaved,
exploited, exterminated
How did it feel to be surrounded by Japanese Americans
with whom you were not related? Prison
is prolongation I felt like
I was standing in
a graveyard waiting for the sun
to pass into eclipse for the light to christen
what was buried beneath
the long, ship-like passage of shadow
I don’t remember the way you remember
I don’t remember a prison, but Easter
I don’t remember which season or burying
In the forbidden sight
of each blackened window
a face permeated
the face of each
age of death.
fit fruitfully into
a box. Each face was made Each face made real
pores that recalled
the frustrated youth of grandmothers.
Why is your skin so smooth, my grandmother asked
one night. I came out of the bathroom. I was a child.
The night was supposed to feel endless, insatiable,
was stunted I saw myself in the window superimposed
on a tree, and a deer, with red eyes
cut in half
I wash my face, I said
I wash my face too
