for Mom and Tomiko  | ||
| |
contrails of sunlight streak the war-torn photos energize all the dust-footed children summer refugees larking in a chalk room paper planes dart like shrapnel a charge so electric horseplay normally frowned upon by Fruitvale's air-traffic controller today is excused a Navy wife, still awaiting word from her husband at sea, she patrols the one-room chaos settling internees back among the living |
but today's kids seem struck by a blue drum crackling like apples uncontrolled as the atom bomb triggering peacetime till a little lost girl at the back (who never saw Japan) feels her teacher hugging her out of exile – and slowly raises from barb-wire memory a hand as delicate as cranes © 2002 by Beth Stevens |