• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Touch bell stick to bell, warming it,

breathe in, breathe out, then make one

sure stroke. The ring changes the air.

The ring rings through din. The din

stills. The ring makes silence all

around, all around. Explosions cease.

Bombardment ends. Combatants

stop to enjoy the sound of Buddha’s voice.

The ring gathers time into one moment

of peace. Which is torn by engine noise

from a light, white aircraft, like an insect,

a whitefly. A drone. A hunter-killer drone.

Yell at it, “Coward! Coward!” We are cowards,

killing without facing those we kill,

without giving our victims a chance at us.

Yell “Coward” up at the drone,

then turn toward the air base and yell

at it, “Coward! Coward! Coward! Coward!”

Your voice carries all the way to Virginia,

where the computer specialist is pressing the buttons.

He hears you, wakes up, stops warring.

HOME AGAIN

Thank you, Wittman. Now go

continue on the Silk Road all the way

to its other end, in Soglio, where Taña awaits you.

It’s Taña! My own dear wife.

Rush into each other’s arms. Home.

No rancor. No ambivalence.

“I saw you constantly. I saw you everywhere.”

True, blondes everywhere—Chinese

with yellow hair, natural and chemical—each

one startling—it’s Taña. My heart leapt.

My heart fell—it wasn’t you. “Welcome, Love.

Welcome back.” The red string holds.

Hand in hand, the dear forever married

walk through the piazza with the bell tower,

and into the snow-topped mountains, stand

for a time on the Soglio mesa, and breathe

the good air between sky and far-down

chestnut forests. Rilke, who walked here,

advised, Change your life. Then westward

home, where Mario, one and only son,

has met his one true love, Anh Lan.

Please, no arguing, live happily ever after.

A long time has passed since I began

the journey of this poem. Poetry, which makes

immortality and eternity, did not stop

time. In 4 years real time:

MY DEAD

John Mulligan

Grace Paley

Pat Haines

Aunt Wai Ying Chew Lam

John Gregory Dunne and Quintana Roo

Ralph Swentzell

Jade Snow Wong

Vera Fessler

Irene Takei Miura

Roger Long

Pham Tiến Duât

Roger Allsop

Carole Koda

Alyssa Merchant

John Griffin

Sandy Taylor

Ena Gibson

Stella Jue

Glenn Kawahara

Gene Frumkin

George Carlin

Guanfu Guo

Col. Kenneth En Yin Ching

Bob Winkley

Oakley Hall

Capitano

Marion Perkins

Kazuko Onodera

Laura Evelia Pérez-Arce Dávalos

Kristi Rudolph

Lawrence William Smith

Ardavan Daravan

Ian and Susan MacMillan

Michael Rossman

Auntie Nona Beamer

John Leonard

Eartha Kitt

Jim Houston

Mike Porcella

Ron Takaki

Eng Lay Dai Gwoo

Jerry Josephs

Naomi Gibson

Roy Colombe

Lucille Clifton

Dorothy Langley Hoge

Tom Pigford

Archie Spencer

Howard Zinn

Donovan Cummings

Henry Vallejo

Gloria Marie Bingesser Beckwith

Graham Nicholson

Charles Muscatine

Janet Adelman

Larry Feinberg

Jadin Wong

Ray Dracker

Jack Larson

Each one who dies, I want to go with you.

I feel your pull into death.

I want to join my dead.

I have broken the news that Fa Mook Lan

killed herself. Everyone who hears denies

that it happened. No. How? Why?

The woman soldier comes home from battle;

her child does not recognize his mother.

He cries at sight of her; he runs away from her.

Why not give up on life?

I found evidence, as scholars know evidence,

of how Fa Mook Lan died.

I was at a conference welcoming to Notre Dame

Bei Dao, the poet who wrote

a ritual for ending a thousand-year war.

The people kneel at an abandoned stone quarry,

and fly 50 paper hawks. In a footnote

of a paper entitled “A Poetic Lesson,”

I read that Fa Mook Lan killed

herself by hanging; she refused the emperor’s

order that she become one of his wives.

The source cited was the P.R.C.’s

National Tourism Administration.

1998. Her hanging

may be revisionist history;

governments have trouble acknowledging P.T.S.D.

Why not give up on life?

Why continue to live?

I make up reasons why live on:

1. Kill myself, and I set a bad example

to children and everyone who knows me.

2. I will die deliberately,