Yom Hashoa

The Breendonk concentration camp is embraced

by a freeway and a suburb. It looks like a fairy

tale castle, but nature is a cover-up I follow

walk into the first corridor. Silence is a monster

my footsteps echo, filling it’s belly it is hungry.

The audio guide tells me that noise was a way

of life the clatter of boots, beating, beating,

beating, dogs barking. Life is a glass and

the screaming can shatter it, but now there

is silence and I can feel it on my skin

it is too loud. The click of my camera’s

shutter, shudders like a half-remembered

gun shot.

Most firing squads would miss

humanity shaking through their fingertips

and the commandants enjoyed killing

too much, taking lives with their own

fingertips. It is so quiet here.

And in the silence we forget. On Holocaust

Remembrance day my Facebook feed is more

concerned with Sloths than with Yom Hashoa.

Maybe, memory is slow and it has yet to catch

up to us, but silence eats memory.

At the Boneville damn museum, I stand

in front of blankets in glass cases, the sign

reads, gifts for the Indians. Maybe, we think

that silence is a gift to let something rest peacefully

is not a gift it is a deaf sentence.

We teach ourselves factual inaccuracies

to avoid hearing the thing that we don’t want

to ask ourselves. What would I do if I was

there?

Fact, fear was not a factor for bystanders

most people benefitted greatly from the murder

like America benefitted from the slaughter

of the Indians, like the sugar barons benefitted

from writing a constitution without Hawaiian

recognition. People didn’t do anything

because they didn’t want to.

Fact, if the number of words in this poem

devoted to rescuers was proportional

to the number of bystanders. They would

receive one word. That word is choice

It is a choice to forget. It is a choice to walk

down that hallway. It is a choice to be a hero.

It is a choice to be a perpetrator. It is a choice

to remember.  

The earth has bandaged itself in green

and filled its arms with tears, but we

just see beauty. We cannot understand

that we are the scars.

Humanity is a scar. We are the only

evidence of every war crime. We are

the only record of every person that died

We are the silence, we are the noise.

Noise once shattered people at Breendonk

Today silence shatters them again.

When we do not remember our voice

sound like Krystallnacht, when remain

silent our footsteps smell like ash.  

Ark De Triumph

Noah's Ark is the solution

to all of our economic problems.

At least, in the state of Kentucky

where it will have 900 workers

walking two by two, floating on a flood

of forty-three million dollars

in tax breaks, because in the book

of Genesis, Gipod clearly tells

Noah, "bro... Noah... Broah,

can I call you that? Well, Broah

if you build me this ark I will 

give you some tax breaks."

So Noah built the ark, 

because hacing two of every kind

of animal is an expensive fucking

hobby that playing Pokemon

never prepared him for, and he needed

The money to support his multiple wives

and implied mistresses, which did not

destroy the family structure. Back then,

God only made it rain for forty days 

and forty nights--but in America

the flood has been happening for forty

years drowning the American worker

in mounting debt, without the olive branch

of wages. And America's workers need

an ark to save them from drowning

like the endangered species they are.

Neckties (5/30)

after Amy Everhart

1.

There are eighty-five different ways

to tie a necktie. I tie a full Windsor,

because that's the knot my grandfather 

taught me. Most people, use a school boy

knot, because it is the easiest.

2.

The first neckties were worn by factory

workers. They were not meant to be fashionable.

Instead, they were practical and designed

to catch food. Today, neckties are not 

considered practical.

3.

Whenever people ask me, "what's the special occasion?"

Or, "why are you all dressed up?" I tell them, "Life!"

Because life is my special occasion. 

4.

Sometimes, i want to ask them, "why are you so dressed down"

or "who told you that sweatpants are a good idea"

5.

People always ask me if I'm gay

this is because people believe

that there are only two ways

to knot your heart, but hearts

are like ties, there at least

eighty five different ways 

to fall in love.

6.

Whenever i travel i bring people back neckties

because neckties hold memories.

7.

The blue plaid tie i wore to prom

with the girl i loved but never told

8.

The pink paisley tie i wore in the final

round of nationals for speech and debate.

9.

The green floral tie i wore while writing

this poem.

10.

The first necktie you wore to work

11. 

The necktie you wore to your funeral.

12.

The necktie you borrowed from me

13.

Once, somebody said how do you know you're not gay

if you've never tried it.

I thought maybe this was a valid point. 

14. 

I do find some men attractive like

The philosophy major who wears neckties.

He is a handsome man.

He makes me question my sexuality.

15.

Zac Ephron makes everyone question their sexuality.

16.

Being gay isn't like indian food you can't just try it out

Because if you dont like indian food you can spit it out

but if you decide you don't like dudes, it's a little

more awkward to say, "bro do you think you could take

your penis out of me?"

17.

I went on a date with a man once.

It was awkward. I wasn't attracted to him.

I just wanted to make people happy.

18.

There are eighty five different ways to tie a necktie

most people only know one.

There have to be more than two ways to love. 

19.
Maybe we should learn how to tie knots
to other people instead of knotting people
into categories. 

Pancakes and Neckties (6/30)

The night, split open

as Macklemore told

us that we were golden

and that night we were

windows down throwing

chunks of our vocal chords

into the night, under golden

street lights. Stomachs full

of perfect golden brown

pancakes. My necktie is

a pastors hands clasped

in prayer. My hands cup

the night. The volume knob

is a Pentecostal choir.

We are the golden arch

of the covenant. This

is the birth of a moment.

We have yet to be miscarried

by middle age, still fetal

positioned to birth ourselves.

We are pancakes in the frying

pan, turning golden. We are

the unwiped tables in a diner.

We are the speedometer

and the asphalt. We are not

the cop car. We are not the exam.

This is not a promise. This is two

people, screaming in a car

turning the volume up a little bit

each time the song repeats.

Silly Rabbit Dates Are For Kidz (4/30)

We met on the magic show
of the Internet and to prove
that she was a magician
she pulled a rabbit from
her purse. Not a stuffed
toy, but a real motherfucking
bunny rabbit, just like a Wes
Anderson movie. Her bag hopped
as she dropped sunflower seeds
and in that moment I knew Snow
White bribed all the woodland
creatures. My heart is an animal

I have never tried bribing,
only putting it in the cage of my
ribs, but somehow it always
escapes. The trick to being an escape
artist muscles and flexibility.
My heart is a muscle and it sure
is flexible. It beats my chest
like a rabbit in a bag.

“Oh no” she said. “He's eating
the bag.” Maybe he just wants to be free
to escape. He dreams of being the star
of the act rather than the prop.

I've always wondered how magicians persuade
animals to appear on command.
Do they tell them that they will be magic?

We all dream of being magic
of being the empty air suddenly opened
of being the person floating in the air
of being the illusionist, rather than the trick
of walking from the water torture cell unscathed

Truth is, I was waiting for someone
to appear out of thin air
and take my heart off my hands
wave their hand over it and make
it explode into a shower of emeralds
or silver coins. But that's not how magic works
Houdini was killed by a punch
to the stomach. And David Blaine
is left doing product placement.

When rabbits retire, do they
wake up in the purses of girls
on first dates with poets
that way their final trick
can be appearing on a page
abraca-metaphor. I thought
maybe I had magicked her to be
just like what indie movies told
me would happen. Then she did her final
trick, disappearing. There wasn't even
a hat left. Magic is the space between
hello and goodbye. Magic is a rabbit.

Magic is the ordinary date made
marvelous, by a bunny rabbit chewing
through a bag.

Origami History (or Folded Tongues) (3/30)

My last name is an origami crane

and American tongues can’t fold

into those sounds, so I’ve given

up on caring when people shred

the syllables of my name into

confetti, to celebrate ‘murica

because Yasuoka, You-sucka,

Yuh-soka, Yuh-soko

Yaki-soba, Yasuaka, Ya-so-k

It’s all the same in my melting

pot ears. And there are more

important shredders to be

worried about. My grandfather

was three years old those paper

planes flew over his birthday party

on their way to unfold battle ships

he was never in an internment camp

but he told me he remembered

visiting one. Yet, my AP US

History textbook lies, Everystate

except for Hawaii hadinternment camps

This is not true. Hawaii had internment

camps they were just crumpled up

and forgotten under the weeds of time

and all that’s left of and my textbook

folds fifty states of suffering into a single

sentence. They took people with origami

names like mine and folded them into

horse stables, surrounded by barbed

wire that metal origami. Today, we have

crumpled them up and tossed them into

the waste basket of history along with

the rest of the Japanese suffering.

I am sitting on my uncle John’s porch

and his mother tells me about growing

up in Japan during the war, she was

in high school when it looked like America

would invade the teacher led her class

into the forest, they had no lead, so they

told them to turn bamboo into spears

and that they were expected to tear

one American soldier from the history

books, before their bodies folded into

corpses. Their homes were made of rice paper

so when we firebombed Japan

Tokyo looked like a lantern.

You see, war always starts with the paper

work, paper bullets, propaganda, passports,

draft cards, lists of names. We are paperwork

Human beings are origami cranes trying

to fold ourselves a thousand times

so that our wishes can come true

but the scissors of war cut us into snowflakes

and our tongues still can’t fold themselves

into our neighbors names so they learn

to tear their syllables apart. I don’t care

when people mispronounce my name

what I do care about, is how our tongues

refuse to speak about those camps.

How the onion is the only place to cover

the anniversary and Manzanar is folded

into nature photographs. Our tongues

are scissors. Silence is a string.

My grandmother is too young to remember

the day the war started, at six month old

if I have a grandson. The silence may be too

old for him too remember.

The Detergent Aisle's Hymn (2/30)

I was buried in the sand.

I had nothing but a book

of poems and Bear Grylls’

Man Versus Wild. Idug,

chipping away at the dunes

for years and when I broke

the surface, she was standing

there hanging clothes. Shaking

the sand from the folds

each shirt she hung buried

me a little deeper.

She could have warned

me about the beauty of laundry

how much she loved washing

things clean. Even now, I can

remember her detergent:

Apple Mango Tango.

The day after she told me

I never want you toleave,

while she rested her spine

against my bookshelf limbs

and we were spoons digging

at the lonely night. She asked

to borrow my laundry card

and washed never from her

hands. I am just a shirt

hanging out to dry. I am

the sand spilling from their pockets.

I am the book of poems becoming

a shovel. I am the spin cycle.

This is how she lives in a Laundromat

I spent months searching

every single coin-op for spare change

thinking I would find a quarter

of her in those tiny caverns.

The laundry always tumbles

but I am left digging sand with

poems.

I never want to live in a Laundromat

Instead, I will be the ruined shirt

on your hanger you cannot throw

away. I will be the stain in the carpet

I will learn the art of the dirt, holding

onto never and never washing

these ink stains from this page.

[based on a prompt from http://www.rachelmckibbens.com/2009/03/writing-exercise-10.html]